On November 6, 2024, the day after the USAmerican presidential election, Katie Sarah Zale called me to see how I was doing and to ask what I thought Sam Hamill would do in response to the election. Sam would have called his poet friends and created an anthology. We decided to create one and to do it in time for the January 20, 2025, inaugural. We each invited a few poets we knew as co-editors and took submissions for a month. We got Greg Bem to agree to be publisher via his Carbonation Press in Spokane. We whittled down the work of nearly 300 poets to just over 100 and a few days before the inaugural, we had the galley in our hands.
Along with Katie and I, we had allia abdullah-matta, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Robert Lashley, Roxi Power, CChristy White and Theresa Whitehill. We each read the poems, ranked them and commenced discussion, arguments, and the merits of a given poet or poem. Could saying no to a friend result in a lost friendship? Does a poem deserve to be in the book because they are a friend of one of the editors? Does the book itself, as it emerges, have a consciousness that we can track if we consider that? Can 8 different stances toward poem-making mesh for a cause greater than all of them? These were among the issues that came up and eventually resulted in a 280 page book that features some poets you have probably heard of. It is a book I am delighted to be associated with and I think an intelligent response to the political situation in which we find ourselves.
In the call, we stated: “We are looking for words that come from thoughtful reflection and compassion for the loss we feel for ourselves and this country. (Please no screeds.)” Still, we got many poems that were filled with righteous anger, on which we passed. The book features many poems that offer suggestions, pathways and even self-care tips for the new Winter in America. That very phrase “Winter in America” comes from Gil Scott-Heron, and was used by the editors as a sort-of invocation to Gil’s spirit and legacy. I heard his B-Movie when I was 18 years old on WXRT-FM while a college student and had never heard anything like it. His take on Ronald Reagan was prophetic. That we left the parenthesis open is a nod to Charles Olson, whose sidebars in a poem sometimes never ended. (“You go all around the subject. I didn’t know there was a subject!”) Roberta Hoffman’s cover image was a crop of Jasper Hoffman’s painting “Goetia Study.” Both the cover and the painting are striking and suggest a tone that is a little chaotic; a little disturbed. Quite appropriate we think.
We scheduled two Zoom readings, January 19, 2025 and one on January 20, 2025. Katie and I are grateful to have been able to do this, for Greg Bem’s management of the process and for his amazing press, to our co-editors and all the poets who submitted. I hope this book gives us some solace and some direction to handle this interesting time in history.
Buy the book here.
Sunday, January 19, 2025:
Monday, January 20, 2025:
Thank you to Greg Bem & Carbonation
I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of the reading ( I missed half of Mondays) and to rereading such thoughtful pieces.
This morning I couldn’t resist a bit of doggerel in solidarity for the publication process
It’s a carbon nation
Yet that ratio
Of bubble to fizz
Gives burp to the notion
Of a fossil vacation
How consumers might relish
to ration the carbon dish
Tis a consummation
devoutly to be fished
It takes carbs for oration
ideation to idealization
Yet such quizzical queries
As belief in reincarbonation
Might revive flat drinks
Of fat berries on car ferries
So why & or & why not
throw the whole kitchen sink
From wonky winks
To nods & no blinks
To fix this shit
Even if just pen & ink
Cuz we’re all on the brink
& as abomunists frink
This all calls to think
But I need a drink
With some carbonation