My relationship with Tony Frazer and Shearsman Books is ideal. I submitted to the publisher only because I’d previously read and enjoyed several of the books it’s published. What a delight, then, to have my own manuscript, SILK EGG, accepted by a press I’d long admired.
As a result of SILK EGG, I would come to receive some of my favorite critical reviews, for instance that I write the way mathematician Jürgen Köller advises adjusting an oval to an egg shape by multiplying the y² in the equation x²/9+y²/4=1 with t(x). Or, from another critic, that the impact of opening the book is a “slap.” Or, from yet another critic, that the “thing not there” in SILK EGG is a “blow to the solar plexus.” Math and violence—I am the author but had no clue, and I’m grateful to Mr. Frazer for the chance to discover what it is I was writing. For, I’ve long believed that while the poet begins the poem, it’s the reader that concludes the poetry experience. In such a relationship, the publisher often plays a much-needed role.
My dogs Athena and Achilles also convey their Salutations and gratitude to Mr. Frazer. They like to trade reading “novels” from the book for their night time reading. That the book induces sleeping is, no doubt, simply a function of being tired after long days of German Shepherd romping. After all, they will not eat the book.
From Ilokano, my birth language, we convey gratitude by saying Agyamanak unay, Tony Frazer. May you live and publish for another 64 years.
As a result of SILK EGG, I would come to receive some of my favorite critical reviews, for instance that I write the way mathematician Jürgen Köller advises adjusting an oval to an egg shape by multiplying the y² in the equation x²/9+y²/4=1 with t(x). Or, from another critic, that the impact of opening the book is a “slap.” Or, from yet another critic, that the “thing not there” in SILK EGG is a “blow to the solar plexus.” Math and violence—I am the author but had no clue, and I’m grateful to Mr. Frazer for the chance to discover what it is I was writing. For, I’ve long believed that while the poet begins the poem, it’s the reader that concludes the poetry experience. In such a relationship, the publisher often plays a much-needed role.
My dogs Athena and Achilles also convey their Salutations and gratitude to Mr. Frazer. They like to trade reading “novels” from the book for their night time reading. That the book induces sleeping is, no doubt, simply a function of being tired after long days of German Shepherd romping. After all, they will not eat the book.
From Ilokano, my birth language, we convey gratitude by saying Agyamanak unay, Tony Frazer. May you live and publish for another 64 years.
Athena and Achilles read Silk Egg together
