My first book of poetry is coming out this week! It’s an art book in collaboration with photographer Paul Ickovic, pairing my poetry with his photographs, including previously unpublished pictures. It’s titled Gorgeous Infidelities. The poems match the sense of urban and personal dislocation and storytelling imagery of Mr. Ickovic’s photography, most often focusing on the link between the natural and the personal in context of social or environmental threat.
It’s an honor to work with Paul Ickovic, whose photography is housed in many museums nationally and internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; National Gallery, Prague; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; International Center for Photography, New York; as well as many prestigious private collections. He has published four books, collaborating on two with playwright David Mamet and one with former president of Czechoslovakia and playwright Vaclav Havel. The Smithsonian has begun archiving his work.
This Wednesday, Dec. 10 at 7 pm, I’ll be giving a reading and presentation at the Smith College Poetry Center to accompany the launch, which will be free and open to the public.
You can buy the book at Broadside Bookshop in Northampton, MA.
My whole soul without you is pure fatigue.
The hours pass like honey, slow and gold,
A world poured into each drop:
A world of my thwarted imagining.
I build of my own spit mixed with silk:
The poured grains of pollen, sons of the petal;
The thin milk of the flowers.
I chew it like leather. I make it soft,
Full of the flexibility of potential:
These even, mathematical white walls,
These wells of sweetness, these bitter children,
This afterbirth of my labors, this invented castle.
