A Tiny Compendium

Some time ago my manuscript The Icarus Sketches was picked up by Seven Kitchens Press. I've seen some of the chapbooks Seven Kitchens has put out and been impressed, so I was quite excited to see Icarus in the light (bad pun, sorry).

The poems I devised are a sequence, beginning with Icarus the Young, taking him through various childhood issues, then letting him live (he's offered the chance to live so long as he serves as a symbol of the long journey not taken), but each poem mimics the structure of the original myth, the rise and fall. So whether he's applying for a grant from the DoD or acting as a snarky docent, he's Icarus. I think the sequence stands as a damn good chapbook.

Then I saw the sequence my friend Crystal Boson was writing. It, too, took Icarus as a subject. It, too, reinvented him in a way few writers have bothered to try. But where my individual poems are fairly simple, hers are Ashbery-dense. Where her poems are fairly similar in style and voice, mine have a great deal of variety. The two sequences do really interesting things next to each other, effectively creating a space wherein the reader can imagine a whole spectrum of new Icarus material.

And here's the happy news / kicker. Ron Mohring at 7KP is going to publish both sequences in one chabpook. We haven't worked out all the details yet, but this will be a tiny compendium, containing two distinct works by two authors. Given my love for The Scarlet Compendium by Alice Notley and Douglass Oliver, I'm doubly excited.

Details will come over the summer. Anybody who wants to pre-order and/or review and/or would like to see Crystal and me reading side-by-side, drop me a line.