charity barn poems

 a month or two ago i raised money for bail funds by offering to write a barn poem for every $5 someone else donated. they were, on average, written with the person in mind, based on things i know about them, or things we have talked about before. i had to write ~75 barn poems. i am sharing seven of them here:

 

Barn Poem for Cavin B. Gonzalez 1

we slathered up a pig in nacho cheese instead of mud

we had to open the windows in the barn

well, we didn’t have to

but it was starting to smell pretty bad

worse than usual

a cheesy, piggy funk

i mean, it wasn’t that bad, tbh

could have been worse

i expected much worse

you can barely smell it now

so, uh, are you still interested?

please buy this barn

Barn Poem for Alec Sugar 2

we follow the sludgy doom riffs out of town

louder and louder

the weed stink also louder

(is that why they call it ‘loud’? i don’t know anything about weed. except the smell, i know that)

the drums rumbling through our bones

the riffs – sheets of viscous rain

(i don’t like similes in poems

so i rewrote that line to be a metaphor^^)

the growl, the lick

the doom tongue lapping us up

oh yeah, babbyy

maybe we’re high already

we hold hands until we don’t

it felt nice but i don’t need to talk about it if you don’t

you still ask where it could be coming from

like yo don’t know, but we both know

we’ve been to that barn before

and we’ll be there soon

and we’ll come back again

ok. it’s a promise. pinky swear.

Barn Poem for Chris Dankland 1

took my metal detector back out to the desert

dug up old barns

barn after barn after barn

stacked them in a loose pile as the sun beat down

i sweat through my clothes digging up barns

i drank all of my water digging up barns

my mind was empty

my arms were sore

the barns all grimaced against the dunes –

an ever-growing pile of skulls

no, wait, they were barns

i got heat stroke but

i’m pretty sure they were barns

Barn Poem for Chris Dankland 2

competitive barn racing –

illegal in most states

often violent, brutal

a showcase of the limits of our humanity

what’s that movie about the, like, the rolly derby kinda sport

like on roller blades but people die

there was that scene where the protagonist begrudgingly snaps some dude’s neck on a railing or something

fuck what was that movie?

anyway, competitive barn racing is a lot like that

people carry knives, usually, for example

and there is often very little racing

it’s mostly a knife thing

Barn Poem for Todd Snider 29

mark linkous performed under the name sparklehorse

he somehow had a major record deal

he did heroin and passed out on tour once

pinned his legs underneath his torso

something about when that happens and you move your legs finally

there’s a release of some built-up mineral, or something

it can kill you

it didn’t kill him

but he couldn’t use his legs for a while

he went on tour in a wheel chair

he recorded a sad album

well, all his albums after that were sad, to be fair

but that one, good morning, spider

he recorded that one in a barn apparently

i just looked it up

maybe i knew that, maybe that’s why i started writing about him

once he sang about an apple bed

which was a term he’d made up to refer to a moss-covered rock

one he knew in childhood

he wanted to go back to that apple bed

he also sang about horses

a horse, a horse / my kingdom for a horse

that’s a shakespeare reference

and it’s the first line on his first song on his first album

he also had his heart broken

probably many times, but there was a last time

after that time, he went into a public park with a rifle and shot himself in the chest

imagine that – a rifle

on the song about the apple bed he has a drum sample that sounds like a distant gunshot

i used to get teary-eyed when i heard it

this was in the context of his death – he had already died by the time i first heard the song

the last lines on the last song of his first album are yes your hair smells like sunshine today / gasoline horses will take us away and probably the last line he ever recorded, on his 2009 collaborative ep with Fennesz, is goodnight, sweetheart

 

Barn Poem for Donald Ryan 1

the most luxurious barn life

hammocks and heat

one of those rainforest showers

and only the choicest of hays

hell yeah

this kicks ass

Barn Poem for Todd Snider 2

how many barns

until we no longer need the word

until that’s all there is

the barn as background

as foreground

past, present, future

nothing but barn

and we can just move on

barn poem backgrounds

i've done 3 podcast interviews and two written interviews about my book 50 Barn Poems. interest in the book has since waned (which is fine) and back during the promotional cycle/interviewing i generally felt unfocused and uncomfortable about how to talk about the book, what other people might think about what i said about it, etc.

i realized that in some ways i censored myself unnecessarily in fear of what people might think about me or the book, that being honest about it in some way would make people like it, or me, less. so i've decided to write this blog post with some details about the creation/writing/publishing of the book.

1. prior to writing it i had written very little poetry, and almost no 'good' poems, and for a long time considered myself 'someone who wouldn't write poetry'

2. three or four of the barn poems were reworked versions of older poems/short stories/excerpts from other projects that i repurposed for 50 barn poems. i feel like it's obvious which ones they are, if you read it. everything else was written wholesale for the collection

3. it took roughly 7 days to go from settling on the idea for the book (based on a off-handed joke in a group DM) to submitting the final manuscript to clash books. i also submitted it to moloko house and bottlecap press. i had, somehow, forgotten to attach the file when i emailed moloko house, and they were nice in their short correspondence about that, and when i withdrew my submission to them.

4. clash responded within ~3 days, preceded by them following me on twitter. (something similar happened just before i had a story accepted in wigleaf. however, soft skull follows me, and as far as i know, they otherwise don't know/care about me, so this isn't a tried and true gauge of interest, but maybe usually means something). this puts the book at ~10 days to go from vague idea to publishing deal.

5. there was pretty extensive back and forth about the formatting of the text, margins, and fonts, due, i think primarily, to the software leza was using to typeset it and its various presets. this discussion exclusively took place over twitter DM. after a while i 'gave up' on suggesting changes which is why, for example, it does not use hanging indents, but this only impacts ~5-6 lines in the whole book, as most lines are very short. i think this was a bad experience for leza and i feel bad about that, but i think the inside overall looks really good compared to the original versions, and compared to other poetry books on clash.

6. stephin merritt's name was misspelled on both the inside and cover in the original printing. his name is still misspelled, but in a different way, on the back cover (but spelled correctly on the inside) in the second printing. other things are misspelled in the first printing, including daniel bailey's name. i think there's still a typo in one of the poems in both printings that i forgot about and don't really care about. i plan on mailing stephin merritt both copies and apologizing. i hope he thinks it's funny.

7. in terms of other poets on clash, i have no idea what Big Bruiser Dope Boy thinks about the book, or about me. i am intimidated by him and his poetry and i assume he thinks i suck/it sucks. however, BBDB friend requested me on facebook maybe two months ago (i am surprised by how many writers are 'active' on facebook...i don't remember the last time i friend requested someone or posted anything on facebook...i worry this comes off as 'rude', to the people who are active on facebook) so maybe he thinks i'm fine. sam pink said nice/supportive things about it in a twitter DM after i sent him a copy. i should send BBDB a copy i think - i think i didn't originally because of feeling intimidated/self-conscious. i submitted to clash because of sam and BBDB. they both have books on 11:11 now. i don't plan on sending a book to 11:11 but partially out of a desire to not make them think i'm just trying to 'act like i'm at their level and go where they go' which is a fear i have often when it comes to submitting/publishing/promoting, for example, when i had a short story i read on the zero point fiction podcast that was released immediately after bud smith and joey grantham had stories on that podcast, even though i didn't know either of them would have stories on it when i was working on recording my story to send in, which is a complicated thing to think/talk about and i think just me being paranoid/self-conscious.

8. i did not receive an advance, which is fine. the royalty split is good as per the contract, but i don't actually know how much i receive per book. i think i make either $2.49 or $4.98 per normally-priced print version sold, based on receiving a few royalty payments of $4.98/month. i think i've sold maybe 100 copies through clash and maybe 20 copies myself. i haven't done the math. i've given away ~15 copies through barn poem contests, blurber copies, and random people i like/talk to. i have several copies sitting on my bookshelf, but i am kind of afraid of going to the post office during the pandemic.

9. i never really knew, nor have i since learned, the proper/right way to try to get excerpts published in anticipation of/in support of a book release. different magazines seem to have different protocols and categories. i don't really know. i kind of gave up on it.

anyway, i've been continually surprised at the positive response from people and the kind things people say and think about it. i accept that it isn't something that appeals to everyone and i don't feel bad that some people dislike it.

i really appreciate everyone who has read the book, reached out to me about it, recommended it to others, interviewed me about it, reviewed it, or anything else in support of it. i've especially enjoyed talking to people about it inspiring them to try writing poetry or reading more poetry. it feels unreal and i've enjoyed what i've read coming from them. so that's been great. i feel good about it. thanks for reading my blog.