My book of poetry is coming along very well. You can read more about it here. I recently received feedback from most of my readers, and have been editing poems and getting them ready for publication.
But that is only half of the job.
The other half is a little more difficult, and involves naming the book of poetry and organizing it. I was finding this particularly challenging. For me, naming something is a process that helps me to figure out the soul of the thing. When naming, I define whatever it is in a way that allows me to hold the sum of it in my head. The organization of the book of poetry had stalled because I hadn’t named it and therefore couldn’t fully understand what it wanted it to be.
Sure, I could have simply listed the poems from A to Z alphabetically by title, but that would lack personality and emotion. It would be less a book of poetry and more a listing of poetry. That isn’t what I am going for. So I have been hunting for a name ever since I began this project.
The other day, I was writing a caption for a photo I was posting on social media, and when I was typing “Ten years ago…” I accidentally wrote it as “Ten tears ago…” and the emotion of that statement really struck a chord. It burrowed into my mind and the rest of the day I pondered permutations of that theme. Eventually, come evening, I had teased out something related to a concept that has long been in my head: Graham Greene wrote a novel named The Power and the Glory. It is about a Catholic priest on the run from a government enforcer. The Mexican government has outlawed the practice of the Catholic religion, and this priest, intent on fulfilling his religious duties, is trying to stay a step ahead of the law. The hitch? The priest is a drunk. Because of this, Greene calls his priest a “whiskey priest” to which he adds the idea of a broken, imperfect practitioner of his profession. That idea has stayed with me ever since I read The Power and the Glory and it even made it into three of my poems, to be included in this collection.
So powerful is this theme with me that while I was thinking about it, I realized that my collection of poems could be nothing else but the writings of a “whiskey poet”. I am an imperfect writer, who nonetheless loves poetry and refuses to put down my pen and stop writing, no matter what. The emotion and feeling involved in writing is undeniable and I cannot nullify the effect it has on my life and psyche.
I introduce: The Whiskey Poetry, A Collection, coming early 2022.
Now that I have a title, a theme, and an emotion to build off of, I have begun to have all sorts of ideas about the structure and the organization of the collection. Already I know how, and more importantly, why I want to order my poems as I do. I still haven’t figured everything out, but I have a starting point. I can make progress and build forward momentum from there. I am very excited about what this will become.
For now, though, I have more work to do!
a simple man 