Itinerant Poet with Toadstools, Witches, & Shame

Mycocosmic is now three months old. Since it sprouted, I’ve done twenty events, recorded a few podcasts, received some nice notice (here’s the latest lovely review, by K.B. Kinkel). Meanwhile I taught very-full-time and kept working to set up summer and fall events, although they’re scheduled more calmly.

“How are you feeling about the launch?” asked another poet, a week ago, as we sat in the lobby of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. She’d been touring, too. Tired, we agreed. Occasionally thrilled; occasionally discouraged; often surprised into gratitude. Here are some warts-and-all reflections based on notes I took during the late spring leg of my book “tour” (it still feels pretentious to call it that).

Tues 5/27, Madison, CT: I arrive at Poetry by the Sea in time to moderate and speak on a panel on Poetry and Politics: the organizer, Clare Rossini, had done a bang-up job, then went down with the flu and had to skip it. The panelists present some amazing poems I hadn’t seen before, including “I Woke Up” by Jameson Fitzpatrick; “Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)” by Muriel Rukeyser; and “Bioluminescence” by Paul Tran. For a while, though, our conversation dances around a hard question: does poetry matter now? A qualified “yes.” Julien Strong says that surely it’s good for us to write them; I comment that poems rarely change minds dramatically, but they can bring about small changes within us, and certainly they manifest us to each other. I wish I’d also said that they keep us tender, awake to feeling, when it’s easier to harden yourself. Someone in the audience raises his hand and declares himself a Trump voter. Afterward, I exit the room and rest my eyes on the steady blue of the Long Island Sound.

Weds 5/28, Madison, CT: I particularly appreciate featured events with Didi Jackson, Major Jackson, and Oliver de la Paz. My reading from Mycocosmic at the New Books Panel seems to go well, too. My new favorite dress, printed with mushrooms and forest animals wearing sweaters, also receives acclaim, although I feel dirty because my cheap hotel had no hot water that morning. My book sells well; don’t think I don’t notice. At a wine reception, a distinguished poet tells me that I should try magic mushrooms, they send you on a gentle trip, but I should on no account drop acid.

Thurs 5/29, Madison, CT: A hot shower, thank god. Major Jackson talks about an assignment he gives students to modulate a single sentence over several stanzas–smart. This is the one day I try to attend an event during every festival session. It wipes me out.

Friday 5/30, Keene, NH: I skip the conference’s last morning to prep for my next two events before I hit the road. This evening’s reading at Toadstool Books is a bust in one sense: even though I’d advertised it through the New Hampshire Poetry Society and emailed practically everyone I knew in New England, only two old friends from Vermont show up. The bookstore people are particularly lovely, though, and ask me to sign a few copies for stock as well as giving me a discount on books I purchase. I read a few poems to my friends, then we go out for NC-style barbeque. It’s wonderful to hang out and catch up. Finally I drive partway to Salem and sleep at a roadside hotel that’s SO much more comfortable than my poor choice in Connecticut.

Saturday 5/31, Salem, MA: I’d never attended the Massachusetts Poetry Festival before. I quickly learn that both the programming and the (book-buying) audiences are terrific. The panel I’d organized, “Understories: Tapping Hidden Networks,” goes exceptionally well. People dash over to talk afterward, and later, seven or eight people come up to me on the street to say they enjoyed it. I go to a few more good panels and hang out with lovely people. I come to regret booking myself a cheap dorm room at Salem State for the night, as a nearby conference-goer hits snooze for ninety extremely audible minutes.

Sunday 6/1, Boston, MA: After fractured sleep, I attend a couple more really good panels, one of them on poetry and shame: wow, it’s a doozy, and closely related to what I’ve been pondering, although the speakers seem to be on better terms with shame than me. After lunch I spend a couple of hours exploring the Peabody Essex Museum, the memorial for the Salem witch trials, and a nearby cemetery. Salem’s downtown sells campy, commodified witchery in store after goth store–what a phenomenon to capitalize on!–but I go around the corner and relearn the history. People demonized and convicted without evidence, pleading for due process but jailed and sometimes executed. It’s as if we haven’t come very far. Sobered, I drive to Boston, where I rendezvous with my husband and son.

Tuesday 6/3, Cambridge, MA: After a day and a half at great museums, we trundle over to Porter Square Books, where most of the event RSVPs don’t show. Talk about shame. I feel it acutely when an audience is unexpectedly small, as if I’ve failed the venue as well as embarrassing my stalwart little company of listeners. This time, a sense of good fortune wrestles shame to a tie. The rows aren’t full but the quality of attention–and the distinction of the writers in attendance–is impressive. The amazing Jennifer Martelli (who’d spoken so powerfully on the shame panel) reads with me then runs a staged conversation about Mycocosmic, having prepared spectacularly with insightful and high-stakes questions.

Wednesday 6/4, MA to VA: SO much fun to navigate heavy traffic through CT, past NYC and Baltimore and DC, then pick up the car my spouse had left at Dulles Airport and drive the remaining 2.5 hours home. Soon all my joints hurt. At least I’ve learned to welcome pre-event jitters–my mind gearing up–and tolerate the post-event comedown, the self-doubt and moodiness blowing past. I don’t like it but can mutter to myself, well, it’s just this again, it doesn’t last.

My author copy of Orion is waiting, the “Future is Fungi” special issue–that acceptance was an unexpected gift from the universe. “Talk to Me, Don’t Talk to Me” is one of only a handful of poems I submitted during this busy school year. I barely feel like a poet, honestly.

Since then, unpacking, triaging email, trying to remember how to rest. I haven’t readjusted yet, but I am finally reading from the stack of poetry books I bought this spring, and I even spent an hour revisiting new-ish poems, starting to figure out what to revise and how. It astonishes me that I don’t have to do that unpack-launder-repack routine and can just stash my suitcase for weeks, although I have other trips to start booking and expenses to file (yes, I’m partially subsidized by my university, a key factor in all this travel). My youngest is home working on set theory and playing Expedition 3, having passed all his quals; my eldest visits soon. Tomorrow I’ll bake my husband’s annual birthday banana cake.

My poet-friend who compared book tour notes also asked how Mycocosmic is doing, a numbers question I don’t know the answer to, although you’ll have noticed a financial theme in this post as an irrational consumer (me) swings between economy and splurge. Book sales, even in the low-rent poetry world, are not beside the point. They make a big difference in which publishers will take you on for the next round; the publisher affects the quality of the book’s editing and design; plus the prestige of the press plays an outsize role in who gets media and prizes.

I found myself telling her, though, that the point of my hard-driving spring was to feel, at the end, that sales don’t matter. I did my honest best; the rest is out of my control. That’s the understory. Now, like a mushroom past its prime, I deliquesce.