CavanKerry Press

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The Birth of a Press Part 6: CavanKerry’s Commitment to Community

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Birth of a Press
The Birth of a Press

Commitment to Community

Like the soft place in my heart reserved for First Books and LaurelBooks, I have another for our community outreach programs that bring poetry to new audiences. In fact, very early on, when someone asked me for a phrase,  (a possible tagline) that would describe CKP, I immediately answered, “a not-for-profit press that serves both art and community.” And that we do. In fact, our community programs are our lifeblood. As I mentioned earlier, I was raised in a community that took care of each other—be it building extensions on one another’s houses, minding the children, or organizing a beach patrol to fix up the beach so the kids could swim in safe, clean water. In addition to my concern for including the general reader in the poetry banquet, it’s natural for me to want to create that same spirit of connectedness and generosity in CKP.

One such program is GiftBooks, which brings fine literature to underserved populations. The idea came from a story I read sometime ago of a man who stood on a corner giving out free poetry books to passersby. This seemed like such a simple way to share poetry with people who might otherwise not be privy to it.  Though we don’t quite stand on street corners, we do give liberally; in our 20 years of service we’ve donated nearly 35,000 books to underserved communities in such places as geriatric centers, shelters, hospitals, correctional facilities, schools, and underfunded libraries. Operation “Support Our Troops” and the Widows and Children’s Fund of Police and Firefighters Lost on 9/11, as well as schools and libraries damaged by Katrina are three of our early recipient groups among countless others. Most recently, we’ve donated over 700 books to 15 hospitals to support our frontline healthcare workers during COVID-19. Requests from interested agencies are welcomed.

Another of our outreach programs is Presenting Poetry & Prose, which focuses on bringing literary art to people where they live—into their own homes and meeting places. The original “Presenting Poetry & Prose” was a program I founded and curated at the John Harms Center for the Arts in Englewood, New Jersey. Though the program was desired and highly successful to the writers who participated and the audience we were able to attract, it was unable to sustain itself because we could not maintain an audience. It occurred to me at that time that to ask people to come out of their homes to a theatre to listen to poetry on a weeknight, as nice as it was, would be somewhat unrealistic. People are inundated with time commitments to family, work and rest and have little time (and inclination, I believe) to break away to come to hear poetry being read. In addition, since most poetry and prose readings take place in libraries and bookstores, they tend to be attended only by those who visit these places, which excludes a large percentage of the reading population. As we pointed out earlier in this discussion, it was clear that we needed to bring the poetry to the audience rather than ask them to come to us. 

Thus, CavanKerry brings poetry into people’s neighborhoods and community centers through free readings at hospitals, community centers, churches, schools, synagogues, prisons etc. We do this in two ways. First, we accept requests for free readings from the general reading public/specific groups and work with the individual/social director/librarian to arrange these readings in which CK writers read their own work and the work of others, without any cost to the person or organization requesting it. Usually 2-3 CK writers participate in each reading/discussion. In addition, “Presenting Poetry & Prose” is an outgrowth of the GiftBooks program in that populations that receive free books are also offered free readings and workshops. These too are sponsored and organized by CK and conducted by CK poets.

In lieu of in-person appearances during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have made our two editions of The Waiting Room Reader free for download on our website and provided weekly excerpts from our books in our “Words to Keep You Company” series, as well as curating and collecting new writing from several of our authors in response to the state of the nation in our “Dispatches from 2020” series. Further, former Associate Publisher Teresa Carson, other guest writers, and I have made consistent new contributions to our blog. Each of these efforts serves to offer a window for our writers to connect with our readers during this time of isolation and desperation. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, as part of their contractual agreement with CavanKerry, our writers are committed to three free outreach efforts each year while their book is in print; these are over and above any marketing or literary readings/workshops they do. Thus, our writers go out into their own communities and bring their poems and stories to listeners: offering workshops/readings, mentoring younger writers, visiting infirm writers et al. CavanKerry writers then become the spine of our community outreach: they participate in other CK activities as part of a communal or cooperative body. In addition to being excellent writers, each is an excellent teacher and reader. Writers who have published their first book have learned a great deal about the heroic making of poems: they thereby have a great deal to offer students of poetry. Writers are welcome visitors to ailing individuals and members of the writing community in need; they make themselves available to go out to read & conduct workshops to underserved communities in their geographical area. 

A Community of Writers

The twin to our community of readers is CKP’s commitment to creating a community of writers as a partial antidote to the isolation and loneliness that we writers often feel. Our goal was to create a community where writers could share their art and the process of making art. Towards that end, we instituted the CKP Writer’s Summit which once occurred annually at my home. The summit included 5 hours of poems, conversation, and good food and touched on topics of interest and concern to the writers and the press. Additionally, CKP or the writers themselves arrange for readings and events in which they can read together and introduce each other’s work; these are joyful occasions when the poets share their work to each other and a broader audience. 

CavanKerry writers also participate with CK where we need them—in reading new manuscripts, in recommending others, writing articles for the CKP newsletter, offering workshops, helping with fundraising, and organizing events. Throughout the ongoing quarantine, we have launched virtual programming and readings featuring 12 of our authors in collaboration with multiple institutions, including Caldwell University and the Poetry Society of NY to further connect with our authors during this period where in-person events are not possible. More and more, we resemble that community we set out to create.

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The Birth of a Press Part 3: “Strokes of Fortune”

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Birth of a Press
The Birth of a Press

Part 3: Strokes of Good Fortune

Hallelujah!

     Then as if all my collective saints, angels, and muses had heard my pleas and harangues and either concurred or together conspired to silence me, my dream became a possibility! The product of both an enormous stroke of good luck that took the form of an inheritance my husband, Alan received quite unexpectedly and most of all, his enormous generosity to me, I now had the start up capital to start my press. I was delirious. The first thing I did was call Molly and the second was to call my friends Karen Chase, Howard Levy, and Peggy Penn to tell them that I would be honored to publish their books. We were all elated.

     I hit the ground running. I had to learn everything. Immediately! I decided to do it in tandem with the most capable person I knew who miraculously was looking for part-time work. Florenz Eisman (then Greenberg) was a former creative writing student of mine who, in addition to having a great gift for writing, had worked for several years as a vice president for a public relations firm. She, in the course of her career had done just about everything—from secretarial work, to research, to writing. She knew her way around people, business, and most importantly, books. Even computers! 

Purchase Chase's Book
Purchase Levy's Book
My Painted Warriors by Peggy Penn
Purchase Penn's Book

Our Press Needed a Name

     This was the first of many not-so-simple decisions we had to make.  Surprisingly, in all of my dreaming, I had never come up with a name. That took considerable thought.

     Remarkably at major points in my life—when life seemed to be clearing a path for me and success was in the wings, a woman in my life died. Or so it seemed. When I was given my husband, son, and Ph.D, it was my good friend Janice; when I was given my press, it was my mother. My love for Janice however was pure; my love for my mother was anything but. A driven and possessive woman, my mother was far more interested in my intellectual and social successes rather than my writing success. Her great pride was in the fact that I was a psychologist and a professional woman. It was “nice” that I wrote poems. During her illness, however, she developed a marked and seemingly earnest interest in my writing.

     During her last visit to my home in East Hampton, she (and my father!) read my poems. In our family room I had a basket where I kept all of the journals that my published work was published in. I cautioned both of my parents that my work was brimming with profanity and what they’d consider obscenity, and that they violated all of Mom’s prescriptions about voicing personal family matters in public. They were undeterred as they handed poems back and forth to each other. Mom, did you read this one? Dad, look at this one.

     My mother who could hardly see twisted the pages high into the light to read every poem. Remarkably, no one died. Not them. Not me. Rather than be horrified, they were interested in what the poems had to say. My father reminded me that he’d been a laborer all his life so he’d heard those words before. Nor was he surprised by all the raging that went on in the poems. They asked me questions, particularly about events recorded in the poems. They did not argue; they did not chastise; most importantly they did not judge. 

It Was a Miracle of Sorts

    These poems had been there in the same spot during scores of previous visits and they showed no interest in reading them, but this time they were ready. I don’t know what prompted that openness, but I know the three of us were grateful. This was an intimacy that we had never known. For years, I had kept much of myself from their view. They knew only facts about my life; I kept what mattered safe inside; I had strayed from their version of good and wholesome and I long since saw any value in exposing either them or me to the worlds that separated us. They did not need to know; I did not need to confess. Yet on this weekend, this Saturday afternoon in November— I like to think it was even Thanksgiving weekend, as we always spent it together—we were ready. The gift of that closeness served us well during my mother’s illness. 

     My parents have always amazed me in their ability to grow as human beings as they aged. My father’s steps were always steady and involved with virtually no regression. He held fast to what was important to him, namely his Catholicism and the Church as supreme authority, but he was open to influence about everything else. All his life, he loved to learn. The world of people and nature were magical places for him and he reveled in each story or creation.

     My mother was more complicated. Her growth did not come until her cancer. Prior to that she was of one mind about most things and that mind was always hers. You couldn’t convince her of anything and she was unpredictable—completely open one day and then refusing to talk the next. If she let you in, perhaps revealing some confidence, she would quickly shut you out. After revealing a devastating account of her mother’s death when she was a very young child, she was furious when I referred to it later on. She was enraged that I had taken this secret wound from her. I had violated her. She refused to speak to me. I stayed away from her for long stretches of time. 

     Miraculously, however, when she got sick, she shut the door on all that anger and resentment; it was simply over. She had other places to go. Kinder, happier places in which to live. It was as if she were reborn, but this time without the darkness. With her own mother seemingly close and whole, she began forming the bedrock of love that we all count on to carry us into adulthood, trusting that the world will care for and love us. She finally knew she was blessed. She finally believed she was loved. She was grateful and said so for every kindness or attention. Being close to her was effortless. She invited it; we all accepted.

     And she lost no time. She wanted to know everything about each of us. In my case, my writing—what was I writing? Was I writing? I should be writing. I should tell my story. She gave me Reader’s Digest large print books that included autobiographies of strong women. Write your story, she said. People will read it; you tell the truth. Her support was palpable and unwavering. I told her that I had been writing the memoir of my young self as a 12 year old girl. She wanted to read it; I read it to her during hospital visits; I sat by her bed for hours everyday writing while she slept.

Our Name

     There was no greater gift I could have received than to be close to my mother when she was dying. It had always saddened me that such distance was necessary, but my sanity required it. Though she longed for closeness on one level, she destroyed it on every other. To face a parent’s death with coldness between you is a barren, painfully lonely land. To be able to go with her and face it together was a blessing. She talked to me of cooking for Dad, teaching him to cook, her concerns for the grandchildren, what she felt, what she wanted, what she worried about. I was able to give to her for the first time since I was a child. 

     Shortly after she died, the money miraculously arrived for the birth of the press. A friend suggested I name it for her. I liked the tribute and was relieved and very pleased that rather than cut her out as I had in the past, I now wanted to include her in this major event in my life. But to name it after her alone would be incomplete. There was more I wanted to say with that name and I didn’t want to exclude my father. I settled on CavanKerry—the two counties in Ireland where they were born—my father, Cavan; my mother, Kerry. Though CavanKerry would not be an “Irish” press, it was from that land—those two lands—that my own writing grew.

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The Birth of a Press Part 2: “Starting Your Own Press; The Challenge”

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Birth of a Press
The Birth of a Press

Part 2: Start Your Own Press

For years, I dreamed of starting my own press that would bring out the work of all these gifted writers along with my own and get our shows on the road. Despite my initial success in contests, interest in my work diminished as my fascination with the poem as a visual life in space increased. Once I abandoned the more traditional long line that started and returned to the left margin for a form that flowed from the emotional logic of the voice and used the whole page as canvas to bring this voice to life on the page, I was ‘out there’ on my own. Clearly, the more inventive I became, the more I reduced my already slim chances of winning a competition. I had stepped over the line. Journal editors remarked on the interesting form that would be a ‘typesetting nightmare’ to publish. Others found it too distracting. With each submission I offered to have the poem typeset myself if it interested the journal editors. (Those who accepted my poems did not ask me to do that.)  Clearly, if I was ever to see my poems collected in a book, I would have to publish my own.

       Other friends were coming to the same conclusion about their own books. Either bite the bullet and risk castigation by the literary elite for self-publishing or abandon the work to the bottom of a dusty file cabinet. Neither solution was attractive: inviting public criticism or disappearing. Of the two, I chose the first; the latter was unthinkable. I would give myself one more year to find a way to start my own press, but if unsuccessful, I’d publish my book myself despite the fact that my preference was always to publish other work beside my own.  The dilemma was more than personal; it was and still is universal.  

I had no training or experience with publishing but that seemed very surmountable. I knew the books I wanted to print. I had a clear vision of what books should look like. I had ideas. Lots of ideas. Which I shared freely with anyone who would listen– Alan, my husband, Molly Peacock, my mentor, my friends, other poets, other mentors. I talked and talked…and talked. Interestingly enough, especially given my complete lack of confidence during the first three-quarters of my writing life, I had full confidence that I could create this dream press of mine. I had come through a Ph.D. program with a concentration in research, and those skills taught me a bit about how to explore more than human behavior. I would follow the same logic to learn about publishing.  What I didn’t have was money. More than a minor problem.

I continued to talk. I continued to dream.

My mission became all the more urgent as I heard more and more stories about friends without publishers—in some cases after three or four books (maybe all with different presses). It had always been my assumption that once you found a publisher for your first book, your problems were solved—you could count on them to publish subsequent work (provided of course that the art remained at the highest level.) Discovering that one cannot assume one has a home with a publisher at least until one has published several books and developed a significant name in the literary community, was devastating. Publishers for the most part only supported poets whose careers were already made.

My concerns were broadening, crystallizing. Given the paucity of publishing venues for poetry, the absence of opportunities for first book publication (other than those supported by fee for entry competitions), an apparent bias against older writers, as well as one against psychological and emotionally daring work, I dreamed of a press established, first, to provide publishing opportunities for gifted writers under-recognized or rejected by the literary mainstream, and secondly, to create a community of and for writers: a home where writers could share their art and the products of that art with each other and with the greater community of readers. My childhood living in a small blue-collar community which took on each other’s burdens as their own as well as my early years at The Frost Place Center for Poetry and Arts in Franconia, New Hampshire formed the bedrock of my commitment to a community of writers. A community of writers and a community or readers: I wanted to do my part to make that happen.

                                                            The Challenge

          Along the way it became clear that to sell poetry, publishers needed to expand its audience. Since marketing and selling books will only be as successful as is the product/literature desirable, the way to sell poetry is to increase both its availability and relevance to general audiences.  But poetry isn’t discovered in book stores. One doesn’t happen on a great book of contemporary poetry displayed on front tables; these are reserved for Stephen King, John Grisham and self-help. Poetry tends to be hidden on back shelves and must be searched out. But only by those who know it’s there—poetry enthusiasts, not the general reader.

        Poetry can often overwhelm and intimidate the general reader; in fact, many believe they aren’t smart enough to understand it, that it’s more intelligent and more important than they are.  It stands apart from them—several steps above them. It makes them feel small.  

        I knew first- hand how intimidating poetry can be based on the way it was taught to me in college (it was never part of my grade or high school curriculum)—day after day dissecting word after word after word of The Wasteland. Alas, that experience was a wasteland for me and turned me away from poetry for many years.  Not surprisingly, readers like me, diminished by the arcane ways that poetry was presented would not turn to it for pleasure or solace as those who love it do.  It follows that to sell books of poetry, publishing’s challenge would be to create a readership that cares about it and believes it cares about them. Fortunately for me, many years later, having experienced the endless bliss one finds in the simple but profound brilliance of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman, I returned to poetry and fell very deeply in love.

In my subsequent fantasies of my dream press, I vowed that it would increase poetry’s relevance to a general readership by publishing fine art that centered on real people living real lives and written in fine but accessible language.  Ours would be a poetry of heart and emotion rather than exclusively intellect and ideas.  Our challenge (and that of the broader literary/publishing community), would also include bringing that poetry to its readers rather than waiting for the audience to come to it. That would require an outreach program that brought the poems and poets to people where they live— in their homes, community centers, offices, hospitals, prisons, schools, geriatric centers, shelters.  I was dreaming. I was planning. I was ready. Where would the money come from?       

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The Birth of a Press Part 1: “No Room at the Inn”

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Birth of a Press
The Birth of a Press

Part 1: No Room at The Inn

            I’ve often thought of poetry as the orphan child of publishing. Commercial publishers have all but abandoned it.  Other than the most visible and prestigious poetry virtuosos whose connection to a particular press give it a kind of pedigree— an aesthetic imprimatur— commercial presses do not publish poetry. There are reasons for this rather depressing state of affairs. Publishers cannot publish what they cannot sell. The audience for poetry is extremely small and is comprised mostly of writers, academics, and/or what might be considered an artistic elite.  It would follow then that, since the audience is so limited, so also are the opportunities for writers of poetry seeking publishers.

           To make matters worse, despite the fact that a writer may have as many as 30 or 4O poems published in literary journals, until you’ve published your first book, you are regarded as unpublished and are therefore ineligible for further awards, virtually stuck professionally. Without a book, you cannot teach. In some cases, you cannot even read your work since readings often take place in universities and book stores. Universities pay honoraria, but only to writers with published books; book stores tend to invite only published writers to read because they will sell books.  Some poets turn to self-publishing for a solution, only to find it’s frowned on by the literary community.  This, despite the fact that Virginia Wolfe and Walt Whitman, among many others like them, self-published. Sadly, the publishing community cannot help these new voices and rejects them when they try to help themselves.

           The very noble task of keeping poetry alive then has been assumed by small independent presses. Bless them!  Fortunately for all of us who write it, there are more and more cropping up every year. But alas, there are still too few to resolve the dilemma of the rudderless poet. The number of books that can be published by these underfunded small presses in a given year is a small fraction of the talent waiting in the wings for a vehicle to bring their work to their potential readers. Not surprisingly, the few available opportunities are offered to the more experienced, more widely published poets. The unfortunate result is that, other than a few occasional bows in the direction of a new talent, the majority of small presses do not print first books. Certainly not first books of poetry. They can’t afford to.

Except through contests.

           Contests have become small press publishing’s very welcome resolution to the isolation of new poets. But the situation remains critical. Other than self-publishing, virtually the only way to get a book published as a new poet is to win a competition. But this means you have to be the one in a possible 2000 entrants to win one of a maximum of 15-20 first book competitions, so most new talent goes undiscovered. New poets are on their own, and the overwhelming proportion remain unpublished.

          Regrettably but predictably, like their commercial older, bigger siblings, small presses too are constricted by the lack of funds, even more so since small presses that focus on poetry and literary prose do not have the popular best seller that their larger brethren count on to pay the bills. They must rely on other sources of income beyond sales. Most, therefore, are established as not–for-profit organizations that qualify for public support, such as grants and tax-deductible donations.  But there too they encounter ceilings.

           Small presses must live frugally.  Most are founded, organized and managed by volunteers who work endless hours for little or no money. They love poetry and want to do their share to bring more of it—particularly contemporary poetry—into the world.  Beyond grants and donations, most independent small presses help defray the enormous costs of giving birth to books by conducting the annual competitions mentioned above, which bring in substantial funds, making many more books possible and provide wonderful opportunities for the gifted, ‘unpublished’ writer who is the winner.

           But contests have their downsides. Besides fueling the envy/competition (one winner versus hundreds, perhaps thousands of losers) that so many of us writers and artists battle with, contests require entry fees—many quite substantial. Since they are the only viable route to publication, more and more ‘unpublished’ writers spend countless dollars they often do not have entering multiple contests annually. For a fortunate few, there are letters announcing that they’ve been chosen as finalists; in the end, however, the likelihood of winning is miniscule.

           The problem is even greater for an older writer. Readers for these contests are often young graduate students in creative writing programs. Their preferences in subject matter and writing style are often very different from that of their older sibs. As a result, publishing joins many other arts/professions which shy away from middle aged and senior writers—particularly those producing daring, unconventional work.

          Along the way, this became my story too. I had started writing poetry when I was already 42 years old, but was now approaching 60 with no book. Sure, I’d received lots of encouraging letters from enthusiastic small press editors and contest judges telling me my book was in the running, a finalist even!  Like so many others, I’d wait several months before the letter would finally come from the Academy or from Pitt… Each time, no shout of Congratulations! Instead, reaffirmations of how publishable my work is, how fine… but….

           In the beginning you can’t believe it; you got here, all the way to this amazingly delicious place that says, yes! You belong here…in fact you’re right up there at the top with the best of them…. Unquestionably your book will be scooped up by another publisher, the editor reassures you; they see it time and time again; your book will find a home. And you tell everyone you know…

            But then it happens again. And again… And all you want is to get your first book out there where people will read it—you imagine it beautifully placed in an artful collection. There’ll be a picture and ‘blurbs’ from people saying congratulations and calls for readings and getting to work on the second one. And you’re ready. The work is ready. But “We’re sorry…”

            Too many of my friends, friends I got my MA with, friends I workshopped poems with, taught with, read with… all the same story, all this talent, all this art, all this disappointment/rejection. It was becoming increasingly clear that the likelihood of any of us winning became smaller with each year. Publishers seemed to pass over former finalists for the newest talent. Eventually we stopped entering… Some set manuscripts aside; others like me just continued to write more poems and finished second and sometimes third books and dreamed of finding them a home. 

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January Gill O’Neil elaborates…

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THE CATHEDRAL

—After Rodin’s The Cathedral

I watch my daughter imitate

the pose of Rodin’s Cathedral.

Her arms curved in slow gyration.

It is her way of understating

the dark bronze, how two arms

can captivate the imagination

in their dizzying swirl,

find balance between

light and shadows. In truth,

the hands are both right hands

turning in on themselves, an architecture

almost sacred, serpentine, yet protective

of the space within, of what the

bronze cannot hold. My daughter bends

uncomfortably away from me, resistant, as if

her whole body is questioning

what it means to be a girl.

She sees—maybe

for the first time—what is there

and what is not from the hollow

her hands make, all the empty angles

that never touch,

the almost-grasp of the intimate.

Her wrists slight and glistening

 

with summer’s patina,

her fingertips conjure her being

and becoming,

body and soul

closing and opening

at the same time.

 

A few years ago, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem hosted an expansive exhibit of sculptor Auguste Rodin. My daughter and I fell in love with his sculpture, The Cathedral. We were enthralled. And while she moved on, there was something intimate about two hands almost-grasping. It seemed to be the perfect metaphor for us as she enters her teenage years and we enter a new phase of our relationship.

 

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Rewilding

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January Gill O’Neil elaborates…

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SUNDAY

You are the start of the week

or the end of it, and according

to The Beatles you creep in

like a nun. You’re the second

full day the kids have been

away with their father, the second

full day of an empty house.

Sunday, I’ve missed you. I’ve been

sitting in the backyard with a glass

of Pinot waiting for your arrival.

Did you know the first sweet 100s

are turning red in the garden,

but the lettuce has grown

too bitter to eat. I am looking

up at the bluest sky I have ever seen,

cerulean blue, a heaven sky

no one would believe I was under.

You are my witness. No day

is promised. You are absolution.

You are my unwritten to-do list,

my dishes in the sink, my brownie

breakfast, my braless day.

Sunday

Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you planned, so it’s important to stop and breathe. No day is promised. We must appreciate the small moments—even when the kids are away, even when I am alone. It is in my moments of melancholy that I find gratitude.

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Rewilding

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Ringaround Arosie (after the sculpture by Eva Hesse) – Harriet Levin

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This poem and many others were triggered by the exhibition “Eva Hesse Sculpture,” May 12-September 17, 2006, The Jewish Museum, New York. “Ringaround Arosie” “Ishtar,” “Hang-Up,” “Chain Polymers” “Ink Wash on Cardboard” “Just Before” “Contingent” “Laocoon” “Up the Down Road” “Eighter from Decatur” and “Oomamabooma” are titles of works by Eva Hesse. Some of the poems describe objects in Hesse’s work and others imagine Hesse’s life experiences—particularly her marriage at a young age to another artist and their early divorce, as againt the background of her historical experience. These poems are to quote Berryman, “essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me)…who has suffered an irreversible loss and talks about (herself) in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even in the second.” Lucy Lippard’s Eva Hesse, Da Capo Press, 1992, provided useful information along the way. Lastly, this book is in memory of sculptor Brian Wagner who first introduced me to the work of Eva Hesse and lent me all his Eva books that I never had the chance to return.

Ringaround Arosie

You targeted me and forced my extinction,
drew circles around the parts of my body
where you dared to aim: my neck, my wrists,
my breasts. How could I escape your asteroid

come hurtling? Too much of my history
is etched in stone. Like lichen or mica,
you subsumed even my shadow
and sealed over the crevices

where I roamed. You drove long stretches of highway
and read my desires in strip mining,
my sins exposed, determining
where to dig into the sediment’s

repository of old arguments.
Jaw hardened, fist banging down,
you did not say wait or anything else
that broke into words of love,

because you wanted to render
a bee’s hover and extract my DNA,
your artist’s eye trained on the darkest nights,
nothing but a chisel to pick away,

standing on top of that airless promontory,
bending over the rift to find a trace.
Measure my primitive atmosphere.
Preserve my dusky voice under glass.

– Harriet Levin

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY & THANKS, WALT!

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A few years ago, I was privileged to read at the Something Old, Something New (Jersey) 350th birthday celebration at the Hoboken Historical Museum. Curated by CavanKerry poets, Teresa Carson and Danny Shot, the program included several contemporary poets reading the work of one of New Jersey’s great poetry masters—William Carlos Williams, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg to name a few.

I was delighted to be assigned Whitman. He’s my personal Great. I’m hard pressed to say what I love more about him—his wildly generous soul or his wildly generous poems. It’s often said that Whitman’s greatest gift to us is his creation of a grand mythical figure whose voice he sings. Loudly and openly. He is Everyman. He is every cell in every body. He is the God Man—and he challenges us to the same.

When I think of all we have inherited from him—and the list is long, the most important to me as a poet and person, is that he gives us permission. Permission as writers, permissions as people. To glory in who we are. Unadulterated, unmasked, unadorned. And we revel in this counsel. As writers we want to be creative, honest, imaginative and original, but we have barriers to that freedom. We also want to attract readers and praise; we want to be good poets, but we’re often held back by what we perceive of as the unseemliness of our experience, our feelings and our motives. We think we have to turn away from who we are in order to create selves that are worthy of this elevated art. Regrettably, we believe poetry is holier than we are, so we must make ourselves worthy to write it.

Whitman debunks that. Poetry is not better than him; it is him. It is his bowels, his brain, his bicycle, his Brooklyn Bridge, his lilacs, wounded soldiers, lovers, trees. Not that he wasn’t as greedy for recognition as the rest of us, but he refuses to relinquish originality –by writing ‘inside’ the lines –to get it. Likewise, he doesn’t aspire to be worthy. He is worthy. While we often think of humility as a desirable trait in the person or poet, Whitman is anything but. Yes, he was vulnerable and often vacillated between approval and rejection of his more successful contemporaries (Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow…) and wanted at least to be counted among them–if not seen as their superior–but he was also steadfast in his commitment to his universe and subject matter–the whole world of what it is to be human. The whole world of what it was to be Whitman.

He takes on sex, heterosexual and homosexual, and writes proudly and abundantly of its pleasures capturing them in the most exquisite language and line. He elaborates on the wildly feral magic of love and wrote generously of it. He glories in the organs of the body as much as the lilies of the field. For him, there is no subject that isn’t appropriate fodder for poetry. In terms of craft, he blows out the more traditional poetry line, stretching it to the end of the page and then some—one wonders how far he’d have carried it if he were not bound by something as trite as paper size. He refuses to allow himself or his readers to take a back seat to life—he’s audacious, grandiose, honest, narcissistic, courageous, hedonistic, spiritual and compassionate without apology; in fact, he glories in his greatness—the greatness we all share as humans. He calls on us to be courageous—to break out of convention, to give ourselves over to our imaginations and our bodies –both so ready to create for us provided we keep dogma and judgment away. As did he. Having known him, my poems have never been the same—the nuns would definitely disapprove. Whitman is our mentor, our Everyman Poet challenging us to strip naked each time we sit down to write —be as big as we are, as raw as we are and can be. I happily bow to his wisdom.

Wherever you are, Walt, I trust you’re having one hilarious, outrageous, glorious day! Happy Birthday, Dear Friend, thanks for all the gifts.

Grab the latest from Joan Cusack Handler!

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The Birth of a Press: The Challenge

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Part 2 in our ongoing series, The Birth of a Press, CKP publisher Joan Cusack Handler discusses the ins and outs of running a poetry press.

Along the way it became clear that to sell poetry, publishers needed to expand its audience. Since marketing and selling books will only be as successful as is the product/literature desirable, the way to sell poetry is to increase both its availability and relevance to general audiences.  But poetry isn’t discovered in book stores. One doesn’t happen on a great book of contemporary poetry displayed on front tables; these are reserved for Stephen King, John Grisham and self-help. Poetry tends to be hidden on back shelves and must be searched out. But only by those who know it’s there–poetry enthusiasts. Not the general reader.

Poetry often overwhelms and intimidates the general reader; in fact, most believe they aren’t smart enough to understand it. It’s more intelligent and more important than they are.  It stands apart from them—several steps above them. Alas, it makes them feel small.

I knew first hand how intimidating poetry can be based on the way it was taught to me in college (it was never part of my grade or high school curriculum)—day after day dissecting word after word after word of The Wasteland. Alas, that experience was a wasteland for me and turned me away from poetry for many years.  Not surprisingly, readers like me, diminished by the arcane ways that poetry was presented would not turn to it for pleasure or solace as those who love it do.  It follows that to sell books of poetry, publishing’s challenge would be to create a readership that cares about it and believes it cares about them. Fortunately for me, many years later, having experienced the endless bliss one finds in the simple but profound brilliance of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman, I returned to poetry and fell very deeply in love.

In my subsequent fantasies of my dream press, I vowed that it would increase poetry’s relevance to a general readership by publishing fine art that centered on real people living real lives and written in fine but accessible language.  Ours would be a poetry of heart and emotion rather than exclusively intellect and ideas.  Our challenge (and that of the broader literary/publishing community), would also include bringing that poetry to its readers rather than waiting for the audience to come to it. That would require an outreach program that brought the poems and poets to people where they live— in their homes, community centers, offices, hospitals, prisons, schools, geriatric centers, shelters.  I was dreaming. I was planning. I was ready. Where would the money come from?

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The Birth of a Press: Start Your Own Press

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Part 1 in our ongoing series, The Birth of a Press, CKP publisher Joan Cusack Handler discusses the ins and outs of running a poetry press.

The story of CavanKerry Press begins with my own writing story and is grounded in my study of human behavior and my life as a clinical psychologist. People fascinate me.  As do their stories.  Each and every one—diverse and unique, public and private. But that doesn’t really explain my need to publish books.

For years, I dreamed of starting my own press that would bring out the work of all these gifted writers along with my own and get our shows on the road. Despite my initial success in contests, interest in my work diminished as my fascination with the poem as a visual life in space increased. Once I abandoned the more traditional long line that started and returned to the left margin for a form that flowed from the emotional logic of the voice and used the whole page as canvas to bring this voice to life on the page, I was ‘out there’ on my own. Clearly the more inventive I became, the more I reduced my already slim chances of winning a competition. I had stepped over the line. Journal editors remarked on the interesting form that would be a ‘typesetting nightmare’ to publish. Other’s found it too distracting. With each submission I offered to have the poem typeset myself if it interested the journal editors. (Those who accepted poems, did not ask me to do that.)  Clearly, if I was ever to see my poems collected in a book, I would have to publish my own.

Other friends were coming to the same conclusion about their own books. Either bite the bullet and risk castigation by the literary elite for self-publishing or abandon the work to the bottom of a dusty file cabinet. Neither solution was attractive: inviting public criticism or disappearing. Of the two, I chose the first; the latter was unthinkable. I would give myself one more year to find a way to start my own press, but if unsuccessful, I’d publish my book myself despite the fact that my preference was always to publish other work beside my own.  The dilemma was more than personal; it was/is universal.   My childhood living in a small blue collar community which took on each other’s burdens as their own as well as my early years at The Frost Place Center for Poetry and Arts in Franconia, New Hampshire formed the bedrock of my commitment to a community of writers.

I had no training or experience with publishing but that seemed very surmountable. I knew the books I wanted to print. I had a clear vision of what books should look like. I had ideas. Lots of ideas. Which I shared freely with anyone who would listen– Alan, my husband, Molly Peacock, my mentor, my friends, other poets, other mentors. I talked and talked…and talked. Interestingly enough, especially given my complete lack of confidence during the first three-quarters of my writing life, I had full confidence that I could create this dream press of mine. I had come through a Ph.D. program with a concentration in research, and those skills taught me a bit about how to explore more than human behavior. I would follow the same logic to learn about publishing.  What I didn’t have was money. More than a minor problem.

I continued to talk. I continued to dream.

My mission became all the more urgent as I heard more and more stories about friends without publishers—in some cases after three or four books (maybe all with different presses). It had always been my assumption that once you found a publisher for your first book, your problems were solved—you could count on them to publish subsequent work (provided of course that the art remained at the highest level.) Discovering that one cannot assume one has a home with a publisher at least until one has published several books and developed a significant name in the literary community, was devastating. Publishers for the most part only supported poets whose careers were already made.

My concerns were broadening, crystallizing. Given the paucity of publishing venues for poetry, the absence of opportunities for first book publication (other than those supported by fee for entry competitions), an apparent bias against older writers, as well as one against psychological and emotionally daring work, I dreamed of a press established, first, to provide publishing opportunities for gifted writers under-recognized or rejected by the literary mainstream, and secondly, to create a community of and for writers: a home where writers could share their art and the products of that art with each other and with the greater community of readers. A community of writers and a community or readers: I wanted to do my part to make that happen.

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CavanKerry Press

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Fort Lee, New Jersey 07024
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Proudly Distributed by the University of Chicago Press
Proudly Distributed by The University of Chicago Press
At CavanKerry Press, we firmly believe in making fine literature available to everyone. If you need accommodations to access any of our events or readings, please email Dimitri Reyes, Marketing & Communications Director, at least two weeks in advance in order for us to ensure we have ample time to make arrangements with necessary accessibility services. Click here to review CavanKerry's complete accessibility statement.
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