ASMF - At The Printer

After So Many Fires is off to the printer. I reviewed the galleys and gave final approval yesterday. Thanks to Amanda Mays for her exquisite editorial work and faith in this project. If you're looking for a home for your poetry collection, I can't recommend Anchor and Plume highly enough. Long live the small press!

Thanks to everyone who has already pre-ordered a copy. A poem from the collection to whet your appetite ...


Right Whale Luminary

Whales reached ocean depths of a thousand feet
where eyes (the size of oranges)
were useless.
Oil boiled from blubber,
oozed on bloody decks
before it pooled at the bottom of every lamp in America.

I cannot reconcile the solitary pitch
of a whale’s life, the cold refractory
abyss, with the evenings
of ungrateful revelry it afforded,
or why fear should burden me
when I consider how many leviathans

illuminated
the poems
Emily Dickinson
wrote at night.