Apology (not really) for publishing my mindf___ of a poetry book
Beacon Bloom Roundabout Sculpture at 96th & Westfield at the border of Indianapolis and Carmel
On Saturday, Dec. 3, poet Eugene Gloria came to visit Carmel Clay Public Library for a lecture titled “Behind the Book” and I caught the tail end of the Q&A. I had a question for him regarding self-publishing. It was a question in the front of my mind, as I had recently self-published a book of poetry and short prose titled, “Mindfucking Roundabouts of Carmel, Indiana.”
“There are a lot of publishers out there that will publish your manuscript for a price,” I said to Gloria by way of introducing the issue. “But then you can also publish on your own on a site like Lulu.com just for the cost of shipping and production. So what are your thoughts on self publication?’
Gloria didn’t hesitate to drop the name of the most famous self-published poet in American literary history and the title of his book that received this treatment, Leaves of Grass. “I mean, [Walt] Whitman is the father of American poets,” he said.
He went on to say that, although he didn’t see anything wrong with self-publishing—if you were just publishing for yourself or your friends—he pointed out some significant downsides.
“What works against self-publishing if you're entering a contest for example, some book contests say you are competing for an award,” he said. “They don't accept self published books.”
Gloria speaks as a beneficiary of the contest system. He has won contests that have given him both recognition and publication of his submitted poetry manuscripts. (I enjoyed reading his latest, Sightseer in this Killing City, published in 2019 by Penguin Books.) His book Drivers at the Short Time Motel (2000) was a National Poetry Series selection and My Favorite Warlord (2006) won the Anisfield Wolf Book Award.
It would be interesting to know how much he has shelled out in entrance fees, over the course of his career, for poetry book contests, but I suppose that would have been a rude question. These fees add up, if you enter contests regularly. The entrance fee for the National Poetry Series, which doesn’t accept self-published manuscripts, is $35.
At the National Poetry Series, submissions are read blind, which means that the judges won’t have any idea who submitted the manuscripts (unless the judges have encountered the work in the manuscripts before). This contest seems, at least on the surface, reputable. But I’m not convinced that that manuscripts are always impartially selected in such contests. I’m not the only one who feels/has felt this way. In the early 2000s, a website called Foetry.com came to the fore with the mission of exposing what it claimed were unethical practices in administering said contests.
One contest that Foetry.com exposed was the Contemporary Poetry Series administered by the University of Georgia Press. In 1999, Peter Sacks, who I had as a poetry professor at Johns Hopkins University—who was profoundly inspiring to me as a poet and a teacher—was chosen as the winner. The judge for that contest was Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Jorie Graham, who would marry Sacks in 2000. Foetry accumulated considerable evidence suggesting that this contest was not fairly administered, if not fraudulent.
Whether or not the state of play is any better now, in 2022, I don’t entirely discount contests. I’ve submitted my manuscripts to maybe a dozen of them, but it’s expensive. It’s also a lot of work.
Full disclosure: although I haven’t won any contests, I benefitted from submitting to the Gival Press Poetry Award contest this past spring. My full manuscript didn’t make it to the final stage of judging, but the press ultimately published two of my poems in their literary journal, ArLiJo.
I’ve also published poems in the Indianapolis Review, the Indianapolis Anthology, So it Goes (The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library), Third Wednesday, pLopLop, Poetica, Punchnel’s, Trash Sandwich … The list goes on and on.
Some of the poems in Mindfucking… have appeared before in literary magazines, or my blog, and some haven’t. I self-published them—my babies!—because I didn’t want to throw all my money away on contests. My hesitancy to submit to more contests, however, goes beyond whether or not they’re rigged.
That is, I doubt I’ll ever win if my writing is deemed politically and/or ideologically incorrect by the contest judges. (I’ve been told, quite a few times, that my poems are unnecessarily provocative.) Also, my poems can be a mindfuck. Some of them can be violent, crazy, uber-sexual, and might even be considered blasphemous in some quarters, or maybe too Jewish (more like Larry David than Ben Shapiro).
But it’s hard to offend an online platform. Several weeks after self-publishing on LULU, I was rewarded with a book for the cost of production plus shipping. Acting as my own editor and graphic designer, I had to republish many editions of the book to make corrections, and I spent hundreds of hours doing so. So it’s an expensive process, in terms of opportunity cost. On the upside, you can keep more profits for yourself with self-publishing than you would with a traditional publisher.
I was arrogant enough to believe that my manuscript was a damn fine one, to quote a line from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. His best movies are like Möbius strips, and—if my poems have plots—that’s what they resemble. (Also, incidentally, a number of the Carmel roundabouts also resemble Möbius strips.) I was watching a lot of Lynch in 2019, when I started writing poems in a different vein than I ever had before. The most significant one of this group was the title poem, Mindfucking… which acknowledges Carmel’s status as the city with the most roundabouts in the United States. It also confers the gravitational attraction of black holes on the common roundabout, with the power to take the reader into an alternate universe.
The poem also delves into the crisis I was going through at the time. As I explained to The Indy Star’s Brittany Carloni, for her article “'Mindf---king Roundabouts' and more….,” published Dec. 27, “The title poem … that was a game changer for me in a lot of ways… Maybe everybody goes through some kind of midlife crisis where they've wondered what they could have done with their life if they didn't go down this particular path.”
But the title poem, which starts off the collection, not only took my imagination into an exciting, but deadly, alternate universe while dispensing with my midlife crisis, it also opened up a new world of possibilities for my writing. In this roundabout way, I was able to incorporate the experiences I had had as a man, as a father, as a lover, and as a journalist—in verse.
My poetry has caught on with some people. I was able to get an interview on the Rob Burgess Show podcast. J.T. Whitehead, author of the book The Table of the Elements, wrote a glowing review in The Minderbinder Review of Books, where I got a much better review than Pulitzer-winner Jorie Graham. I was also able to have a reading in Morgenstern’s Books, sponsored by The Writers Guild at Bloomington. And then, most significantly of all, of course, was the Dec. 27 Indy Star article.
So, while I don’t disparage Eugene Gloria’s success, I don’t share his skepticism about self-publication.
(I am, however, skeptical of vanity publishers like AuthorHouse and Austin Macauley that feed on their writers. That is, they promise to publish your book, with editorial, graphic design and marketing assistance, and eat your lunch. Austin Macauley is particularly deceptive because it presents itself as a traditional publisher. After their “editorial board” accepts your manuscript, they want you, the writer, to sign a contract promising to pay a hefty advance. This was in fact my experience in pitching them a novel project of mine, and I declined their offer of publication.)
While my ultimate goal is to find a literary agent—in service of my novels and nonfiction, not necessarily my poetry—I view self-publication as a step in the right direction. That is, my decision to publish on my own might be the ultimate act of arrogance, but it is no more vain than my submitting to poetry contests.
I’m usually too busy for poetry contests, anyway. That is partly because my platform for selling Mindfucking Roundabouts, happens to be the platform for the blog you’re reading right now, and it swallows up much of my time without paying me a dime. Actually, I’m paying out to maintain it. Which brings me to my pitch:
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article, dear reader. Since it is the end of the year, and because everyone else is doing it, I’d like you to consider donating to my blog. If nothing else, I’m adding to the news coverage in the Greater Indy area. I have covered ome important stories this year, including my review of the Herron Exhibition Past is Present: Black Artists Respond to the Complicated Histories of Slavery. I also covered Moms 4 Liberty’s attempt to promote an “exodus from Hamilton County Schools and their unsuccessful attempt to take over the Carmel Clay School Board this fall. But some of my stories are more irreverent in tone. Probably my favorite story this year recounts my experience as a team leader in the Nora Goodwill store, making sure valuable paintings make it to ShopGoodwill.com rather than the sales floor.
In lieu of a direct donation, you might consider purchasing a volume of Mindfucking Roundabouts, if you are curious about my book in any way whatsoever. The proceeds will help me continue IndyCorrespondent.org, which I am funding largely on my own. You will also be able to get some idea about where the intersection between journalism and poetry lies for me.
Chances are it exists at a roundabout.
