Po Biz Cranks Up a Notch

The contract for the poetry book is in hand, the notebook designated for the marketing plan, and one favorite writer has signed on to write a cover blurb. I'm making lists like a madwoman: bookstores, friends, relatives, anyone on either coast and in the middle who can read (and that's pretty much everyone I know) . I'm asking lots of questions and hoping the publisher won't eject me from her email file. But these poems matter, and I want them to go to a very good home. The Great Hunger ms started a year ago, though some of the poems are older than that. Seems I've been aware of food as necessity and metaphor for years. One of the first poems I had accepted by a total stranger is called "The Last Supper." It's a retelling of the story from the point of view of the cook. "And no one said it was the last of anything." 

First readers of the ms have varied in their responses to individual poems, but favorably to the collection as a whole, despite its quirky construction. Unlike many / most slim volumes of poetry, this one has a preface, a Food Time Line, a manifesto and a reading list of influential non-fiction books related to our endangered and wasteful food supply mechanisms in this country. My heroes are Kingsolver and Pollan, among others. The time line idea came from Ed Sanders two-volume history of America, though not nearly so extensive as his.  I am very happy to join the ranks of writers who put their skills in service to the greater good.