Back in September, I received a phone call from Elisabeth Sheffield, fiction writer and managing editor of Subito Press, that my book, The Rhino of Our Dreams, as it was originally titled, was selected for publication. The call came at the end of a long day of teaching, so as I walked to the train listening to the message I was quite happy to hear the news. I’d only sent it their way a month or so previous. The reason for the quickness is that the book publication ties in with a course on publishing that the University of Colorado - Boulder offers in their MFA program. Because of this, selection and publication of the book must happen within the confines of the semester, give or take. It sounds like a course I wish I could’ve taken in graduate school, because one learns the basics of editing, typesetting, and design. Speaking of design, Emily Tipps, a former student at CU - Boulder and current student at the University of Alabama in Book Arts, designed the book. I think design may be the only part not done in-house, so to speak. Overall, my experience working with Subito was great.

Obviously, the book is no longer titled The Rhino of Our Dreams. After some discussion with Noah Eli Gordon, Elisabeth Sheffield, and friends here in Philly, I decided to change it to Song & Glass. Making the decision was tough, oddly enough. The book had been titled Rhino since late spring 2006. Often, if something is “set” that long for me, it tends to stick. In the end, Song embodies the book better than Rhino. If I’m allowed to have a favorite poem in the book, it this one published in Fascicle that invokes both Carolina (Caroline) Maugeri and James Schuyler. The former title also derives from this poem.

The fact that the book has been published should serve as a lesson for me. By the time I wrote the first poems in Song, I had already written a book, The Lacustrine Suite, which will be published later this spring by Pavement Saw Press, and I was more or less floundering without writing-discipline. The Lacustrine Suite was written over the period of seven or eight years, and takes more of a poem, poem, poem approach, which differs from Song because Song is serial. The two books are driven by different modes. Not that I think all books from one author should be one-master-mode. Rather, I never thought I would find other ways of writing. All that changed when Michael Gizzi suggested that I get a notebook and write for at least twenty minutes a day, no matter what, and don’t look at any of it until thirty days have passed. At month’s end, decide what I like. Build up material, Michael said. I took Michael’s advice, but skeptically. At the time, I couldn’t see how building material would produce anything. I thought I would blah, blah, blah. Granted, I knew that Schuyler, Clark Coolidge, Bernadette Mayer, Michael, and a host of others used an improvisatory approach. I just couldn’t get my head around the concept. Did I really write everyday for at least twenty minutes from September 1, 2005 - December 18, 2006? No, but I tried to. And I wrote a lot more that I thought I would. Building material. As I put it to Michael once, “I’m writing poems that I wouldn’t have otherwise written.”

At some point in March, perhaps the 19th, I will have a book release party with Jason Ajemian, a good, old friend and jazz musician who taught me the beauty of improvisation before I even knew how to do anything with it. If we can work out the date, Jason will play at the book release with a couple of horn players. Stay tuned.