posted
STORIES FROM THE SPACE BETWEEN (new poetry collection)
My first poetry collection is out!
And, at long last, both this and my other main excuse for minimal progress on my novel (the other was developing a business website, which is now up and running) are mostly out of my hair. Now there's just the 'learning-how-to-promote-stuff-on-social-media-and-sell-more-than-five-copies' phase to get through... (If you discount the 'learn-how-to-write-a-novel' project, I mean...)
I guess it's okay to share a link to the finished book here? I'm hoping it doesn't count as inappropriate marketing, but I don't intend to share the URL repeatedly, so here goes... AMAZON LINK
So, with that, time get back to other writing projects!
P.S. If anyone is willing to review this collection, I'd be happy to provide a free PDF copy to you (provided you don't distribute it widely). Just drop me line. Getting any reviews at all from random purchasers looks like a very hit-and-miss proposition.
posted
Huh, Stories from the Space Between. Suggests subtext's meanings between the lines.
Uh, not spam above, is suited to this forum's mission: "Let us know if you've been published and where we can find copies of your work. Also, let us know about reviews of your work so we can read what others have said."
Though -- consider inclusion of the title in the original post content so that Hatrack folk might be engaged by the title. The title recommends and promotes itself. Though included in the thread title, a few more mentions of what amounts to an effective elevator pitch couldn't hurt. Too easy to miss or misinterpret the book title in the thread title.
I could look at a sample or the whole, though no promises of a review, and utter secrecy otherwise. My profile email address is a catchall for dead letters I rarely look at. If email sent to that address, please notify of such here on the forums, please.
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Thanks, extrinsic -- I've added the title to the first post as you suggest.
And I've just sent the text to your listed address (PDF of inside pages, excluding cover).
If a review (favorable or un-) is forthcoming, marvelous. General (non-review-type) feedback is always appreciated as well -- on this forum or via email. Or if none feels warranted, that's alright too.
For what this is worth: I do have extensive education, training, and experience for poetry reading and responding.
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First impressions of the poems from an initial read: Uh-oh! Oh my!? What the . . . Are new literary movements and schools of thought afoot, self-effaced New Masculism confessional poetry? Not heretofore seen before, new under the sun, differs markedly from the thin, self-deprecated, insincere veils of male prowess gloats per Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Allen Ginsburg masculine confessional poetry.
Does this poetry poach New Feminism's confessional poetry re Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton provinces? Or new movement departure by its own lights and insights? New Masculism's sincere coping strategies for post Postmodern multiculturalism's all of creation's liminal sieges of masculine identity taboos? Huh.
I'm envious, artistically jealous even, for I've sought a new movement to transcend Postmodernism. New Masculism fits that bill of particulars. An art and culture movement about the unique lives of everyday-hero gentlemen relative to Pluralist society? Pluralism is the movement on which I've focused my efforts.
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Hi, extrinsic. And thank you for reading the file I shared with you.
In answer to your uh-ohs, oh my's, etc. I can only say, "Hmmmm."
I sense considerable irony perhaps even amusement but I may be too tired to get the joke or really extract the feedback. (It's been a long day, with a lot of driving and even more listening in it.)
Taking your post literally for a moment: I have no aspirations to start a new movement (as I'm sure you're aware) and definitely not the one you name! Anyway, aren't we a little past movements these days I thought we had trends now instead?
This little collection is, at best, a journeyman effort or maybe an apprentice piece and a way of honoring a commitment to myself to make things and share them. And specifically, to use my own material/experience/imagination in the making (unlike a lot of my paid work).
The poems are not all confessional, though a fair few are. Honestly, they're what arrived and what I polished as best I could...
I do like Plath and Sexton. I know Plath better a teenage crush during that time of life when Thanatos seems most appealing... If I had to compare these poems to her much more accomplished work, I would say they're... quieter. But perhaps that's part of what you mean by 'effaced'. I read some Ginsburg a long time ago my recollection is hazy and I don't have the will to refresh it this minute. Ditto the others. I'm hardly likely to come off well amongst this august bunch though... But that doesn't seems a good reason not to write and publish.
"New Masculism's sincere coping strategies for post Postmodern multiculturalism's all of creation's liminal sieges of masculine identity taboos?" is a bit opaque to me. Which taboos? Possible to explain?
On balance, as is probably clear by now, I'm not sure how to read your post as feedback...
Poetry may aim to do many things, but if it elicits no 'aha' moment, no sensory connection, no feeling or identification, then I suspect it has failed at least for that specific reader. Did any of the poems do anything for you? I'm guessing the answer is 'no'... Or if they did, it was probably none of the above...
Please clarify if you have time. Or, if my guess above is correct there's no need to say more on my account we can consider it 'message received' and move on.
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Many are the social taboos about overborne male chest thumpers and male taboos against showing weakness or sensitivity that run awry in the forms of feral hegemonic masculism, abuses of women and ethnic and lifestyle minorities, any perceived-weak inferior ripe for subjugation and domination, to name a few, man-up and one-upmanship rites that seek "single combat" wins at any cost and means to an end solely to assert ignoble male supremacy status.
Not irony intended to disparage or pan, court irony, in particular, an overstated encomium for a subtext of a commonplace paradox and a net, wow, yeah, maybe a glimpse of an appealing new departure from what came before. A classic commonplace argues for or against a vice or virtue, or Pluralist both and more, of the human condition, Menippean satire of a sort. Maybe too many layers of irony, though?
The intended paradox there is of a self-contradictory overstated praise and faint feinted condemnation (court irony) that nonetheless evokes a greater truth: that there's something "there there," maybe a foreshadow of a New Masculism art about everyday-hero genuine human gentlemen relative to the not going away soon, if ever, identity crisis Pluralist society of late. Men who can take the heat and stand strong and noble even in the weakest personal situations, fiercest and most pointless status challenges, and share "power," privilege, and responsibility equitably, pleasantly, peacefully, graciously.
If you don't claim a New Masculism art aesthetic, I will and will acknowledge your unintended contributions. Otherwise, though too overly erudite for general consumption, Amazon consumption, consider the post above an excited raw-draft promotional review.
A fully realized promotional review contains seven or so brief sections, about five hundred words, apt excerpts sprinkled throughout: a teaser, a claim assertion and rationale for the claim, several claim support sections, anticipated and rebutted objections, location of a work or body of work within a literary context, a conclusive wrap-up, and never an overtly disparaging word. Though promotional review arts have fallen to the wayside in favor of reviewer self-promotion emphases.
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Defined as above, I'll happily join the movement and claim the aesthetic! :-)
Thanks for the explanation, extrinsic I feel clearer (and strangely, a little less tired). Thanks also for the excited response I could not hope for more!
As you say, for general consumption (read Amazon, most of GoodReads, 99% of Facebook, and currently-washed-out li'l ol' me) it is likely a little too demanding of the potential readers' knowledge and vocabulary -- especially since the text itself is (I hope) relatively undemanding (mostly simple English, etc.).
And yet, I am reassured... Which is a good way to end this week! It's been a demanding one: an awful lot of newness, coming all at the same time. On we go!
But for now, goodnight.
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Stories from the Space Between, Warren J. Banks, 2019.
"A New Masculism Poetics" extrinsic --- guerilla commentator at large
Second, closer read . . . First read for me is full-ahead, be the stream flow, not "be the club," no lunges, no comments, no corrections, just read all in one full swipe, then meditate upon a whole's substances. Next read occasions lunges, if any, etc. Next-yet read, closest analysis for formal response of whatever form.
Second, closer read: there's more "there there" than meets the eye at first light, likely more there than the poet realizes. The poetry caliber meets Plath, et al, conventions, standards, arts, appeals, and far more substance than the mediocrity pall of online self-publication poetry and more than a few poetry journals' contents.
Aside from ready and routine poetic equipment -- metaphor, alliteration, assonance, connotation, and so on -- the individual poems and overall deploy the more exalted and sublime poetry arts: facets of caesura, enjambment, medial turns and apt dramatic pivots, snycope, poetic conceit, instance-related extended metaphor, to name a few of several dozens. More so, whether by design, intuition, or happy serendipity, the mechanics of those figures are incidental to their more relevant aesthetics facets: timely, timeless relevance, meaning making, fresh insight, multiple entendre, cognitive inversion (poetic conceit), and subtext.
A contextual approach aids understanding and observes consequential distinction for all and sundries' appeals; these poems, blunt and sincere confessional New Masculism. The jocular inverse wraths of "Making Monsters" and "Hacks" contrarily confess anger for traditional masculism and male taboo expectations, and inverse envy for hack writers and brutes' damn the arts, make some filthy lucre at all costs, other than more overt confessions of vulnerability, self-doubt, affection, social and private awkwardness, and sensitivity which populate others of the poems.
Though, if or if not by design, a poet's true intents may shine forth from a surface -- or a subtext's smart subconscious plants substitute their odd truths for too rigid a control, or both together and more. Regardless, once published, a work is given to the wilderness for interpretation, inference, acclaim, or condemnation, even creator personal meaning ownership surrendered and usurped; that is, reception of a content's personal to a reader meanings, imports, and understandings' ownership, not the product property itself. Always the creator's creative property.
Feedback, if wanted or warranted, therefore, is moot. The work is fixed, tangible, and copyright and ISBN tolled, irrespective of self-published or otherwise. A competent grammarian could be given to distinguish a few trivial, discretionary diction, punctuation, and poem syntax considerations, though none any way consequential. For example, perhaps instead of "Author's Foreword," //Poet's Foreword//?
Among traditional and conventional masculism and genuine New Masculism are, respectively, self-deprecation's inverse pride assertions and genuine wounded souls who strive nobly anyway. A recent poem by Charles Harper Webb illustrates the former masculism: "Big," Shadow Ball: News & Selected Poems, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. [Unfortunately, behind paywalls.]
"Big" portrays a man's anecdotal problems caused by an "eyes bigger than his stomach" acquisition of a gigantic TV, and liminal subtexts, between the lines, [woe-is-me despair for overreaches' disappointments and (edit)] self-deprecation cognitive inversion of wealth and male entitlement brag. Exquisite, humorous, meaningful poetry nonetheless.
Plath, et al, acclaims come as much from their unique departures and fresh arts debuts distinct from what came before and subtle insights and sublime language arts as from their social and public connections and unique, controversial, and sensational spectacles of their private and public personas. Stories from the Space Between, Warren J. Banks, 2019, does at least as much mischief, less controversially, maybe, or more, and is unique for its new-under-the-sun, blunt, sincere, confessional New Masculism arts.
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extrinsic -- wow! I had not expected such an appreciative response! A little overwhelming, and a very pleasant way to start the day!
So... may I use this? And how?
If, 'yes', a few thoughts on the 'how':
(1) I would like to exclude the first few lines and start from 'there's more "there there" than meets the eye...' if possible. Or, even better, 'The poetry caliber meets Plath, et al, conventions...' (The opening lines speak to a reading process that makes sense in the context of our exchange, but might not work for an 'outside' reader.)
(2) If I may use it, should I attribute it as "extrinsic --- guerrilla commentator at large"? I'm happy to do so, but your working name would probably carry more weight and credibility -- if you're willing to share it with me (by private message if that's your preference).
I'll await -- and then follow -- your instructions in relation to the above.
On a personal note, thanks again for the time and attention you've given to this. I am a little overwhelmed by the review and very grateful.
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Consider the second review above a next rough draft and intended for Hatrack consumption and a personalized trial-and-error strategy of our informal exchanges. Also, see if second opinions might be wanted from trustworthy local acquaintances familiar with the work, re New Masculism potential approaches. Meantime, I have more investigation and draft work to do before further comment, toward a general consumption review that could be used for valid promotion.
Small pieces of the second one suit an "editorial review" category, though I have rare few journal or periodical affiliations at this time, and unsolicited submissions of promotional reviews face steep obstacles. So a "guerilla commentator."
Nor should the type be posted a "certified" buyer review. Those are often astroturf -- artificial sod -- vanity reviews put on by kin, friends, acquaintances, aligns, or a writer self-disguised behind sockpuppets, for sales promotion purposes, or jealous nemeses and pestilent demoters, and as jejune-ignorable as twaddle's idle chatter.
Meantime, Wikipedia articles "Masculism" and Hegemonic masculinity" for why a New Masculism departure is timely relevant and the collection, therefore, worth the while?
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Hi extrinsic. Some responses to each of your 4 paragraphs above (numbering refers to the order above):
1. Cool. And thanks again for investing so much time and effort on this.
2. Understood. Actual publication of a review at this stage of the game would border on the miraculous... If there were any possibility, that would be simply fantastic, but such was not my expectation... Though now that you've mentioned it... Hmmm. (See also the final paragraph of this response.)
3. Agreed. And yet... they are part of what sells books on platforms like Amazon and GoodReads. But, again, that isn't what I hoped for or expected from you. Anyway, I have some 'sockpuppets' working on this, albeit quite discriminating ones.
4. What follows is meandering and might or might not answer your question... Consider it 'what came up for me' at 7:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night...
I am fine with your interpretation of the text through whatever theoretical/analytical lens seems to fit best... And I can see how this lens has relevance and might have traction with some readers.
And, as the originator of the material and material that's pretty personal to me it's difficult to see it from the 'outside' as it were. All I can share is some reflection on my intention and my personal reading of the text, and where that comes from...
From a political perspective, I do not find any version of Masculinism (as counterpoint to Feminism) especially appealing... Maybe I've spent too many years working with LGBTI organisations and some women's organisations to adopt this lens. Or maybe I'm just averse to any label with an 'ism' on the end... Though I do see where you're coming from: the idea of a version of Masculism (or even just masculine identity) that's not mired in defensive twaddle has definite appeal.
But championing such a 'movement'/ideology (i.e 'new masculism') was never my intention; expressing some things that felt personally important to me was. (You will point out that my intention is irrelevant once the text is 'out there' and you'll be right.)
Even so, the book is written in my voice or versions of it. And that's the voice of a white, gay, fairly educated, middle-class, professional man of a certain age, from a certain context post-Apartheid South Africa specifically whose whole career has been focused on trying to support change and development processes in a highly unequal/damaged/traumatised society, on a pretty traumatised, magical, crazy, awesome, [insert your preferred adjective here; there's space for all of 'em] continent.
The post-modern ringing in of the failure of modernist, grand social theory and its replacement with multiple/plural realities is often irritating it lacks elegance, neatness, clarity. And yet, while most of the big, elaborate narratives (e.g. Marxism economics and class are the drivers of historical change; Feminism all inequality stems from gender; etc.) are appealing (all that certainty!), they tend to collapse in the face of physical/social/human realities of direct (and diverse) experience. For all their complexity, they are too simple. I'd rather tell stories and work with narrative, which is infinitely varied and opens up possibilities instead of shutting them down... That's a big part of why I want to write. And also why I would probably be a very poor professional reviewer and an awful scholar... I'd just tell people what feelings and ideas books sparked and leave it at that.
Anyway, this is all just a long-winded way of explaining why I would not, personally, want to be identified with another '-ism' i.e. masculism new or otherwise. I'd rather scrap the concept entirely it sounds a bit ridiculous, but gender doesn't interest me all that much, except perhaps as performance. (An afterthought: Maybe recent years of consulting to the LGBTI sector have also left me with a general aversion to labelling the act of naming hides as much as it reveals. And my encounters with narrow feminist analyses some recent have led me to believe that any lens that gives gender identity [alone] primacy has some serious problems. Ditto, hegemony as a polemical device it's cool... As a tool for personal liberation it's unhelpful, and also not true... Power isn't total people find ways to undermine it all the time.)
But that's me 'as Warren'. The book on the other hand, now that it's published, is an object whose value and meaning will be assigned by others (if they ever read the damn thing!). Whatever meaning you make of it, and can support textually, is legitimate.
For example: 'Making Monsters' was inspired by reading about gang and drug-related violence on the Cape Flats and some thinking I was doing around unemployed youth, poverty and hopelessness in South Africa. Certainly, gender is alluded to in that poem, e.g.:
"Give them to boys unlearned in love, whose fathers fought hard and sad to bitterness, who whisper darkly of loss and power among the unquiet dead."
But for me, the whole piece was a way of thinking through the process by which oppression and hopelessness is produced, and in turn reproduces/enables certain forms of privilege. At the same time, with what little distance and objectivity I can scrape together, I can see how your interpretation works as well.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying again what I said somewhere above (I think I've lost track now!)... Namely: please apply whatever lens feels appropriate to you. What I've said here just offers an explanation of why I'm not yet excited about New Masculism... Which is, in itself, no reason at all not to use it as a focal idea in the review.
As for the uses of such a review (or any review that's more than a few lines of praise or complaint) and where it should be placed... To my embarrassment, I have not given this proper thought at all. A very newbie error! Please forgive. I will think on it for my local market (someone does spring to mind; a reader for one of the better local publishers). Any advice for other markets?
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Objections -- valid -- noted for consideration.
Labels are natural and necessary markers that also falsely pigeon-hole complex matrices by single facets, -isms and -ists especially. Also, labels that imply or declare counterpoints to a given established label, though congruent and parallel, too, garner balks.
Here's a stray-thought label: forensic idiology, investigative identity sciences. Not real-world actual yet, though due for these digital ages' private and public identity data commodification.
Humans are synergistic; a whole amounts to more than a sum of the parts.
Where and how to market: package, advertise, promote, publicize? Where word of mouth buzz, Buzz, BUZZ speaks. Valid claims' controversies about opinion assertions work the magic-est parol mischief. Many venues across the English language poetry community occasion the collection and responses' marketing, etc. Back jacket blurbs excerpted from editorial reviews are a package consideration, three to five brief sentences or paragraphs from separate reviewers.
Good idea: I'll have the back cover reworked once I have some reviews.
And, if I ever self-publish again, I hope to remember this massive learning curve... E.g. promotion comes before publication. Obvious, and yet, after months of revisions I was so eager to get the thing OUT that I didn't stop to think about it at all. Live and learn, and all that jazz...
Wishing you a good one. Time to turn my attention back to client reports and the like. My overdraft needs serious soothing.
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posted
Promotion, etc., in advance of publication includes advance reader copy distribution for review requests (ARCs), and you're on track as is. Extant distribution as is affords time for marketing strategy adjustments. Marketing ends only when a passion withers.
Several venues I now of that would consider a "profile" article about the particular work, content analytical reviews, as it were, promotional subtext, take months to consider publication, offer limited reading periods, late winter through late summer typically, and a two- to three thousand words or so length essay, with relevant excerpts and a short-piece standalone or whole sample. Those strongly favor any inclusive cultural diversity, too.
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posted
Once I'm done with the current round of reports which will take me through the Easter break I'll start hunting down additional sites and spaces for promotion.
Aside from the report-grinding, I'm learning how to use social media more effectively at the moment, and how to manage a website (for the other side of my practice). Intellectually, I know this whole marketing mission is a marathon rather than a sprint... And that fact is slowly sinking in at a feeling level too. Stay well. W.
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posted
Morning, extrinsic. Just a little P.S.: I am starting to come around to your perspective on the book as a whole. (Growing distance from it helps something that trying to market it certainly produces!)
It's clear that finding a way of naming what is different/unique about the text is really important and so far you've come closer than anyone else to doing that. I just wanted to acknowledge that and thank you for the insights... They're just taking a few days to sink in!
Curious -- how percolation time works magic mischief.
Still, continued investigation, percolation, and trials how to best compose a brief, general consumption promotional review, for general purposes. A possible jacket blurb, for one. Numerous strategies arise that are brought to bear.
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As they say in my neck of the woods, "Yebo, yes." Please percolate away at your leisure.
I am up to date on client stuff (astounding!), have a handle on my growing social media addiction (kinda), and have (more or less) stoped obsessively checking if any more copies have sold.
Time to start writing again methinks. W
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Morning, extrinsic. Just checking in on the percolations -- curiousity only BTW, not pressure. Wishing you a good weekend. W
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The perk closes in. Strategies aligned. A busy workweek and daily life here got in the way of a quiet time to launch into more than mental composition trials. The next draft will jump once begun. A facet of the strategies is more quietness, understated presumptions that overstate humbleness, so to speak, opposite of prior drafts, yet as enthusiastic, clearer, that also reflects, as it were, toward a confessional new masculism gentleness and genuine noble strength.
One absent yet part is an apt teaser extract opener paragraph from the collection. A clip hunt of the collection will settle that.
From the Forward, this is close:
"These liminal zones the spaces between at the boundary where air meets water and light dark may be fallow or pregnant with possibility."
If that clip makes the teaser cut, I'd ask permission to replace "with" with ellipsis points? For the pregnant pause that represents, scholars' uses thereof that signal the ellipsis figure, for omissions' fraught meanings, for force movement strength -- dramatic pause for auxesis effect.
// may be fallow or pregnant . . . possibility.//
That way, that clip for a teaser foreshadows the heart of an overall aesthetic basis of the collection: "toward a confessional new masculism gentleness and genuine noble strength", though not given for me to presume to rewrite another's creative vision.
The above "Making Monsters" excerpt is also a certain clip for the body of the support section, and two or so more clips. I yet prospect for two apt excerpts that, together with the Monsters clip, arch force movement of the support section, extended auxesis through climax through catacosmesis figures, like Freytag's pyramid shape's tension force rise, peak, fall. Close on those excerpts settled, too.
posted
Sounds great! And of course feel free to elipse away in whatever way works best.
I think those selections make sense but feel free to quote at will. I am not precious about it (not anymore anyway that's been a definite part of the learning curve).
posted
Oops. In the general busy-ness I just realised that I missed an opportunity to get a few more readers for this collection... I was running a giveaway this past weekend (with small but adequate results so far; we'll see if it helps with traction or not). And I should have posted the link here.
So, apologies for not doing so, after the fact. Keeping my online ducks in a row is proving challenging -- they behave more like cats.
On that note, if anyone else would like to read -- and perhaps review -- just drop me an email and I'll make a plan to get you an e-copy.
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Hi extrinsic. Just following up I see from other posts that you've have a fairly hectic period. As have I... Just finished an all-nighter to meet a deadline. And I'm pretty sure those used to be a lot easier 10 years ago... Ugh.
So, this is not a pressuring message, just a 'how're you doing' message, while I remember to check back.
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A friction rub for the composition is the start section's content, the teaser section, one of the functions. Another is an indirect and covert claim assertion, which I've got in hand.
Several hectic weeks here, too. Hard to find the wanted quiet space among the parade of human misery and corruption before me and the manic thought echoes the macabre stream evokes.
The work blizzard will subside in another week or so, probably. The project simmers on a back burner, not forgotten.
The teaser section wants a nonbumpy summary extract of the whole that also "teases" read of the whole review and the collection especially. Strategy in hand; content as far away as a fingertip sky scrape just out of reach.
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You excite me, extrinsic! I shall continue to look forward to it. And good luck with getting through the other work. Im hoping for a little more peace from next week too.
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posted
Hi extrinsic. Wondering where you might have gotten to... A holiday from Hatrack perhaps? I hope that's it and all is well otherwise? Will drop you an email just in case you're more permanently off this site.
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