Over a decade ago, A Kind of Hurricane Press published on their site my book The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100F Outside and Other Poems. Amy Huffman was the editor (and an excellent poet—much better than me) and she had published a lot of my work. I was quite flattered when she requested a book from me, and I complied.
When I recently went to the web to look for the book, I found it was no longer available. Fortunately, I had a printed copy—perhaps the only one, or one of a very few. A friend in the library scanned its cover and pages to a PDF file for me.
Two weeks later, much to my surprise, A Kind of Hurricane Press dropped into my inbox for a visit. The press was reopening, Amy Huffman appeared to be alive and thriving, and so I sent some more poems her way. The first batch were immediately accepted. The second and third vanished into a hole in the web and I never heard anything at all—not even an indication when my accepted work would appear. I don’t know what happened to my 2013 book, but I wanted to find out. I never did, or haven’t yet.
Anyway, the book consists of a series of poems following a fictional man on his journey away from his wife and what he discovers and learns about life, himself, nature, and, most of all, true love. Keep in mind the character is fictional, but the Katy Trail is real and we do have a great number of extremely hot days in the summer in Mid-Missouri. I’ve been on the trail many times by bicycle and on my feet. Once I actually walked the trail from my town to Columbia, Missouri (about forty miles, maybe more)—but it was during a cooler time and it wasn’t that hard, though finding places to sleep was a problem and too often coyotes were nearby and I had a hard time sleeping.
Over the next few months—Spring until Summer—the book will appear here, on Moristotle & Co., so now you too will be able to read it. Thank you for joining me on my poetic journey and I hope you enjoy the way.
Introduction
The sun sprays its light into the sweat-strewed day,
blue sky slang, curse words, anomalies and cloud fall.
Spit falls over the valley like the stench of skunk hit by a car
and steam empties itself into the air until every breath we take holds water.
“I am giving you your life back,” I say, and you accept,
your left hand closing, the shape of your lips a different pattern,
and I pick up my book bag and head out into the broiling heat of land.
_______________Acknowledgments: Some of the poems in “The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100F Outside” first appeared in the following journals: Jellyfish Whispers and Pyrokinection (A Kind of a Hurricane Press), Vintage Poetry, The Rainbow Rose, The Faircloth Review, BRICKrhetoric, Message in a Bottle, and Curio Poetry.
| Copyright © 2013, 23 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
Michael, I’m delighted to have had this chance to schedule a record number of your posts all at once. That number: 23, including today’s.
ReplyDeleteDid you have the concept of “a series of poems following a fictional man on his journey away from his wife and what he discovers and learns about life, himself, nature, and, most of all, true love” from the outset, or did you discover it along the way? The concept itself, as well as each poem, was a creation.
And did you jot down lines in a paper notebook along the walk, or tap them into a mobile device? Or are you able to simply store lines in your brain and accurately recall them days later?
I actually visualized what it would be like to leave someone you love in the hottest part of the summer on foot and on a trail with few sources for water and even less sources for food. The actual trail stretches across Missouri, but I imagined him doing the path from the capitol to Columbia.
ReplyDeleteAs for how the poems came to me, I put them on my computer, took a number of poems that were previously published, and created a collage, if you will. Then I organized, edited and hoped.
Thanks for asking and I hope you enjoyed the journey.
Hmmm, well, I am troubled by your contriving to insert “previously published” poems into this “series of poems following a fictional man on his journey….” But I will trust they were all inspired by other times you were “on the trail … by bicycle and on my feet.”
DeleteI found many creative works in my portfolio that mirrored the man on the trail, the man running from love or trying to figure out love or even just deciding maybe it was time for him to discover who he was--and these pieces fit in the narrative of this theme. Furthermore, the editor wanted me to incorporate a few pieces she herself had published. She felt they added to the content and the substance of the book. Hope this helps.
ReplyDeleteYes, thanks, that helps. And I now appreciate, too, that persons “running from love or trying to figure out love or even just deciding maybe it was time for [them] to discover who [they were]” are metaphorically “on the trail.” And what a tangled, rugged, sometimes happy, other times sad trail life leads us on!
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