Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book, Places of Permanent Shade.

Places of Permanent Shade, my second full-length book, grew from the chapbook Metes and Bounds, published by Accents in 2010. It brought together the contents of another previously published chapbook (Mappemonde) along with other poems. Metes andBounds had focused on New England rural life, but I was happy to expand the thematic and formal landscape, including a couple of very urban prose poems.

What do you like most about it?

Asking a writer what they most like about their poems is like asking a parent what they most like about their children. I’m not sure any answer can be honest — or, even if honest, stable. Responses will change from minute to minute, with the light.

What did you have to overcome in order to finish and publish a book?

Getting the attention and appreciation of an editorial reader I respect, especially when writing poems that are out of step with the flavor of the day, is the hardest part of seeking publication. In truth, anyone can get anything published these days, or publish themselves, but that is not the same thing as earning publication.

What do you hope people learn/receive/experience from reading your book?

Surprise, pleasure. A desire to read out loud, reread, and read to somebody else. I hope also they’ll send me lots of money, shower me with awards, and make me immortal.

What was your favorite interaction with a reader and/or a fan?

Once upon a time I read a brief riddle poem (see page 32 of Places of Permanent Shade) at a public reading. The next day, an acquaintance who had not attended that event buttonholed me on the street and said, “I just heard a really great riddle”; and proceeded to recite my own poem, word for word. 

What are you working on now? Catch us up one significant event in your life since the publication of Places of Permanent Shade.

Mostly, I feel as though I’m not working enough at anything that matters, but I keep on writing, translating, editing, with several different manuscripts (including collections of reviews of Classical Latin poetry and essays about my work in the Freedom Movement)

I wish someone else might like as well as I do. “Significance” is another one of those slippery words that have too many meanings or none at all at any given time.

Optional bonus question: Is there anything you want to get off your chest about writing or publishing?

My chest, a second-hand, three-drawer wooden number bought for $10 many long decades ago, is stuffed with personal items of clothing that have little to do with writing or publishing. But on it, heaps of books waiting to be read with far more attention than I can ever give them — some of them worth the effort, but most put into the world without enough thought or care. Too many people are writing too much with the goal only of being published. A plethora of bad writing floods the market and makes it harder to swim through to the stuff really worth enjoying. I’d like to get all that bad writing off my chest. Even my own.