Back to the Boatyard

Well, it’s been awhile! I know, I’m a little late…what can I say? I got lost myself in a series of boatyards, first in Hungary, then in one of the matrices of the poems, New England. Does a girl good to get home now and then, especially when she has a book to sell and needs fresh inspiration for the next one!

Before I really get rolling with the blog, just want to report the happy news that two bookstores on Long Island have picked up my book:: Think Long Island First
an innovative treasure run by the very friendly Ewa, located in Buckingham’s Variety store. Totally ironic that I am now selling the book in a variety store that, when we were growing up, we loved to hate. The hawk-eyed manager, watching customers with the wrong ideas, left us feeling like shoplifters just for setting foot in the door.

Stop by on Saturday, October 8, 2-4 pm, and say hi to Ewa and of course, if you don’t already have one, pick up a copy or two of Poems from the Boatyard! (36 Audrey Ave., Oyster Bay. Map on the website.)

And Forest Books in Locust Valley has also graciously agreed to carry some copies on consignment, so stop in if you’re in their neck of the woods and say hello (182 Birch Hill Rd, Locust Valley, NY 11560).

Thanks to those who’ve written, emailed or facebooked me to enthuse about Poems from the Boatyard. I’m loving it. The adventure continues….

Ping!

The sound of chapbook pages turning is heard in the land…Poems from the Boatyard is shipping and my Facebook, Twitter, and email boxes are pinging!

I’m delighted to learn that many of you are receiving your chapbooks, and others can expect to receive theirs within the week.

Just in the nick of time for me: today I leave for Europe, and reeaaallly wanted to know this was happening before travel & spotty internet connections would interfere with timely communications. I can now breathe a sigh of relief, kick back for another tiny celebration, and enjoy all your wonderful comments and reactions, and click on "Like" a lot!

What a journey. And now that this phase is over, it seems to have gone so quickly, with all those hoops to jump through, amazed that it was all happening. But tonight I flop on the couch, flip the pages of the little darling, and celebrate again.

So, travel news…I leave for Europe, returning the first week of August. I will be switching over to my travel blog, and you can follow those adventures if you like, or take the time off to read the poems. If anyone 'gets' kicking back for the summer, it's me. I’ll pick up again here in August, when further boatyard explorations are on the agenda!

And just in case you don’t have enough to read, thought I’d add these links, for those who are enjoying learning about the chapbook, and for those who just relish a good bit of writing:

For more on the lowly chapbook, click here. And here for a bit of loveliness from the Georgia Review.

And speaking of reviews, I’m now on Amazon’s Author Central . Stop by, chat about the book, leave a review, and watch the premier Poems from the Boatyard video! (Kitsch at its finest.)

Or just go to Amazon, and create your own review. Please: no less than 5 stars, thank you very much!

That oughta keep y'all busy till August!

Thanks so much for taking this journey with me. It really has only just begun, but isn’t it good to stop along the way and savor the moment?

Have a great July! See you in August!

A Little Ship with Big Possibilities

Well, well, well, look what just arrived from Fed Ex!

A mailing tube from brother Paul. Inside is what looks like papyrus scrolls from Egypt, but on closer examination, is astounding: original blueprints for the boat my father was building!

I am astonished that the blueprints are still in existence, astonished that my brother should take the time to send them to me, instead of just calling to say he’ll show me next time I’m up. But that’s just the kind of brother he is—one of my heroes! Thanks Paul!!!

There is also a sketch of a gravestone design, for our father’s dear friend Heino, from Estonia, and you’ll find one poem about him in Poems from the Boatyard. Heino’s end was tragic, and we won’t go there right now. Back to the blueprints!

Yellowed and with print faded out of one corner, I can nevertheless share this with you:

“Discovery is a little ship with big possibilities. [Sounds like my chapbook!] She needs but a small cash outlay, she’s simple in construction, and she’s one of the most useful boats per dollar that it is possible to devise. On an overall length of 22 feet, she can be built complete with outboard for under $750—and built by anyone with the tools and know-how to knock together a flat bottomed skiff. When completed, she looks shapely, sails beautifully, and runs along at five knots with a 2-hp outboard. If desired, she can be driven by any inboard engine with a displacement of less than 60 cu in. She’s grand for either cruising or day-sailing.”

A grand design…a sexy little skiff…a little ship with big possibilities…all for only$750! I wonder what that equates to today. Can you imagine building a boat for $750?! That’s probably a tank of gas for some of the larger boats I see in the boatyards these days!

Imagination wanders to the day we might have sailed it...Thanks again, Paul, for stirring the pot!

London Bridge & The Chapbook

More gleanings from Wikipedia...

The centre of chapbook production was London and, until the Great Fire of London, the printers were based around London Bridge. The numbers are astonishing: in the 1660s as many as 400,000 almanacs were printed annually, enough for one family in three in England. One publisher had in stock one book for every 15 families in the country. Inventory of Charles Tias, of The Sign of the Three Bibles on London Bridge, included books and printed sheets to make c.90,000 chapbooks and 37,500 ballad sheets. This was not regarded as outstanding in the trade!

In the 1520s the Oxford bookseller John Dorne noted sales up to 190 ballads a day at a halfpenny each.

In 1707, Josiah Blare of The Sign of the Looking Glass on London Bridge, listed 31,000 books in inventory, plus 257 reams of printed sheets. A conservative estimate of their sales in Scotland alone later in the century was over 200,000 per year.

This is a lot of reading material floating around the UK!!! Nothing like the onslaught we’re swimming in during this age of internet, but who was reading all this material?

Chapbooks were priced for sales to the worker bees of the Kingdom, and contributed to the development of literacy—which in England in the 17th C. was around 30 percent for males and rose to 60 percent in the 18th C. Many working people were readers, and pre-industrial working patterns provided periods during which they could read. Chapbooks were undoubtedly used for reading to family groups or groups in alehouses.

One chapbook collector wrote: "The printing in many cases was execrable, the paper even worse, and the woodcut illustrations, some of which did duty for various tales regardless of their fitness, were sometimes worse than the paper and presswork combined." However, some chapbooks were long, well produced, and some even historically accurate.

Chapbooks spread popular culture to the common people, especially in rural areas. They provided entertainment, information and (generally unreliable) history. They are now valued as a record of popular culture, preserving cultural artifacts that may not survive in any other form.

Then came the mimeograph machine (remember its purple ink, and that wonderful inky smell?), followed by low-cost copy centers, digital printing, and the cultural revolutions spurred by the internet. The punkification of poetry: everybody gets to play and self-publish. Zines, blogs, poetry slams, followed.

And the chapbook lives again, the darling of indie publishers, romancing artists, poets and postmoderns alike. Hope you will get to like them as much, when Poems from the Boatyard arrives in your mailbox! (I know, when?!?)

How to Fetch a Shilling Out of a Handerkerchief

You are all such patient people. I am sure you will receive your book soon, but I don’t know when!!! Hang in there, and perhaps by the 4th?!

In the meantime, let’s continue our trek through chapbook land…

Remember Samuel Pepys from high school English days? He had an interesting collection of 114 chapbooks, which he called "Penny Merriments"--ballads bound into volumes, under these categories:
1. Devotion and Morality
2. History – true and fabulous
3. Tragedy: viz. Murders, executions, and judgments of God
4. State and Times
5. Love – pleasant
6. Ditto – unpleasant
7. Marriage, Cuckoldry, &c.
8. Sea – love, gallantry & actions
9. Drinking and good fellowship
10. Humour, frollicks and mixt.

Wikipedia tells me that “other examples from the Pepys collection include The Countryman's Counsellor, or Everyman his own Lawyer, and Sports and Pastimes, written for schoolboys, including magic tricks, like how to "fetch a shilling out of a handkerchief", write invisibly, make roses out of paper, snare wild duck, and make a maid-servant fart uncontrollably.”

Any ideas on how to fetch a shilling out of a handkerchief?!

And I sincerely hope my chapbook does not have the same affect on you as the schoolboys’ tricks on the handmaiden!!!

Chapbooks continue to charm collectors and wordsmiths: “They can be held in the hand, tucked graciously into a bag, slipped safely into a pocket. They can be read in one sitting. They are inexpensive to produce and purchase, and thus provide a perfect means for getting more new poetry into the world. Their compressed form encourages innovation. Their established relationship with the fine letter press makes them a vehicle for collaboration between artists and writers. They are so easy to read and pass around that conversations and communities are build around them.” (In Praise of the Humble Chapbook, Vivé Griffith, Poet’s Market, 2004)

May your patience pay off, and may you soon fall under the charm of chapbooks as you receive your copy!

PS: the chapbook is now available on Amazon, for those of you who have not ordered yet.

Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg & Dad

Chapbooks have played a key role in American poetry, integral to its development in our culture. It has provided a platform for emerging poets, and for that reason attract the indie, experimental and avant garde. Something about chapbooks romances people, and brings out the inner artist in poets. If you want to see an example, take a look at the chapbooks reviewed by Fiddler Crab Review.

About the time my father was contemplating boat plans, two emerging poets were rocking culture: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allan Ginsberg.

Ferlinghetti, born in Yonkers, NY, eventually resettled in San Francisco and founded the now famous and iconic City Lights Bookstore, the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country. By 1955 he had launched the City Lights publishing house--a mecca for a generation of writers, artists, and intellectuals—Bohemians and the Beat generation.

The City Lights Pocket Poets Series was a series of poetry collections—chapbook style—small, affordable paperbacks with a distinctive black and white cover design. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl was #4 in the series, and led to obscenity charges for City Lights, who successfully opposed the charges with ACLU’s help. (Who ever thought poetry was genteel!?)

The two men were often described as anarchists, opponents to American imperialism, militarism and capitalism. As one poet described him: “Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a more complicated individual than we’re used to having in American life.”

My father had a few obscene comments himself about the poets, and I’m not a fan of either one either. But they changed the face of poetry, gave it a subversive edge, and endure as cultural icons (Ferlinghetti is still living and active in poetry readings; Ginsberg died in 1997). Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind remains the most popular poetry book in the United States.

Chapbooks & Starbucks

A flare from the publisher this week: Poems from the Boatyard is next up in the printer’s queue! Inching forward…

In the meantime, how about a little history on the humble and darling chapbook?

Chapbooks have a long and illustrious career in poetry-dom. Records go as far back as 1553 of “a man offering a scurrilous ballad ‘maistres mass’ at an alehouse, and a pedlar selling ‘lytle books’ to people, including a patcher of old clothes...”

These peddlers—or “chapmen,” from whom the term “chapbook” is derived—were itinerant in England and Scotland. Traveling from town to town, they peddled their small books—pamphlets, political and religious tracts, penny songs, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales, children’s literature and almanacs—in bars, by-ways and street corners, for a few pence each. Some of our most culturally embedded stories began life as a chapbook: Tom Thumb, Mother Hubbard, and Jack the Giant Killer. Abridged forms of Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe circulated.

The chapbooks were simply constructed, and might have been just a single page, or a multi-page fold-over, up to a 24-page booklet, usually with a woodcut design on the cover. Obviously they didn’t last long in that ephemeral state, and because paper was expensive, they might have ended up as wrapping paper, for baking, or, um, "bum fodder" (i.e., toilet paper).

Chapbooks were traditionally illustrated with crude woodcuts, and they captured the imagination from the 16th C. right up until now, with poetry become more popularized through poetry slams and indie publishing. Chapbook publishers, contests, and grants support this popular form, as cozy and comfortable as the coffeehouses they are more likely to be found in than the big box store. I can’t believe Starbucks isn’t on this. Hmmm…

Today, chapbooks can be hand-made, self-published, a low-cost limited edition press run (like mine), or expensive, special edition works of art. They seem to inspire the artist in each poet, and come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, saddle-stitched, stapled, or silkscreened, very often with a woodcut, but just as likely to have some original artwork from the poet or a friend.

I say we mobilize and harass Starbucks to get on the ball! Click here and tell 'em you want to see poetry chapbooks! You might have to create an account, but that’s cool—you'll get a free cup of coffee on your birthday...and, if they bite, you can take pride in knowing that you have helped launch a cultural phenonmenon!