Blurbing

My last few days have been, well, let's just call them adventurous.

A cat had kittens in my attic, and said kittens fell into the wall. B took a sledge hammer to the wall, and by some miracle, I found two squeally, scared and hungry little buggers. We've trapped the mom kitty, and she's at the vet clinic right now getting spayed. The next step is finding homes for the little ones. 

Anyway, this evening I took a break from my kitten antics and sat down to get to a task I'd been looking forward to for awhile, writing my first blurb for another poet, PW Covington, for his upcoming poetry collection, soon out from Slough Press. PW and I had the briefest of conversation about his project at this year's Valley International Poetry Fest. My first collection, The Garden Uprooted, was with Slough Press, also, so I was delighted to hear he was "joining the family" so to speak. And that's us, pictured to the right. Chris Carmona, editor of Slough Press, is at the far left, then PW, then Dr. Cummins, who really doesn't figure into this story at all, so.... and then of course, there's me.

Then, he asked me if I'd blurb his book :-D 

How exciting, right? So it's making me rethink and consider what the function of blurbs are, what makes a good one, and most importantly, how to put one together.

From what I understand, blurbs are like a mix between a review and a summary. They're short, concise, and of course, laudatory. When I write book reviews, I like to think of them as explaining HOW I read the book rather than if I liked the book, so I thought that maybe blurbs could have the same function -- a brief explanation of what the book is about, what it does, and how it fits into the discourse of poetry.

So that's how I tried to approach the task of writing this blurb. I hope I got it right. I spent yesterday afternoon reading the book, and this afternoon I took a swing at writing about it. PW and I have vastly different styles of writing -- I'm formalist, he's Beat. What our work DOES have in common, though, is a sense of place and regionalism. I admire his collection, particularly for how honest it is, how it kind of just strips away the crap and gets to the stark realness of contemporary life.

It feels a little different to be on THIS side of the blurbing. I always felt so horribly awkward asking other poets for blurbs, and I was astonished by their generosity. But you know what, on this end, it actually feels really good to do this kind of work. I enjoy seeing what other poets are doing because it inspires me to rethink the way I write and see the world. So this was a pleasure -- it made me stick my neck out, occupy someone else's sonder, and then, of course, articulate why and how things work.

All good things.

So, blurbing? You're not so bad. Maybe with my next book, I'll put on my big girl panties and ask some other authors for blurbs. Maybe. It's still awkward. Bleh.