On Open Things, launching a book, and art for art's sake
Hello, friends!
How is everyone holding up? It seems hard to believe that it’s halfway through November, and almost all the way through 2023. Soon it will be the time for yearly wrap-ups, New Year’s resolutions, holiday travels and celebrations. Last night my weather app said it was snowing, but when I stepped outside I didn’t see any flakes. It made me feel like I was missing something important, something elusive and beautiful. Will the second snowfall of the season be just as lovely? These are the kind of things I worry about. But then I try to remember that I am the one adding importance and ritual to my world: The earth is just revolving, the plants and animals and weather doing what they do every year, more or less. I’m the one imbuing importance to catching the first flakes of winter; I’m the one making myself sad at the thought of missing them. So I can be the one to release those expectations, create new ritual and new meaning for myself.
Last month I launched my fifth book, a collection of poetry I’ve been working on for many years. I self-published it, and didn’t do a lot of the work in marketing and publicity that I did for my first four books. I launched two books in 2020 and two in 2022, and frankly I was exhausted. Not from the writing. But from the constant self-promotion, from asking my writer and reader friends for favors all the time: Will you endorse my book? Will you post about it? Will you write a review? Will you like, subscribe, follow? And I was confused and frustrated, like many of my writer colleagues, by the diminishing returns for our efforts—it is generally agreed that the algorithm has veered into chaos, in large part because of changes Elon Musk has made to Twitter, but on other platforms as well. We are just not getting the eyes on our posts that we used to, and all the hustle in the world can’t really make up for that.
So what are we left with? Art for art’s sake, I suppose. And having to figure out how to pay the bills some other way. But another thing I share with many other writers in this moment is a sense of relief and freedom, in the midst of the frustration and grief of our crumbling careers. I’m grateful that I had the chance to write and publish my books, and grateful that two of them, at least, sold well before the algorithm debacle. I’m grateful that the other ones are out there, and that a few hundred people at least have bought them and are maybe resonating with my words.
And with this latest poetry book, Open Things, I feel the joy of having created something meaningful to me, having put decades into honing my craft and my style into something that I, at least, love. My original dream was always to just get something into the hands of someone who would feel the same way about it as I felt reading good poetry. I’d love, of course, if I could get it into more hands and make more people feel that way, but ultimately the number doesn’t matter. If I connect with one person, that’s art having done its job. So, as with the first snow, I have tried to release expectation, create new ritual and new meaning, and to launch my book in a way that feels healing and whole to me rather than depleting and frustrating.
Having said all that, here come some book-promote-y things. :) And if you’d like to pick up a copy, or write a review on Amazon or Goodreads, or share with a friend, it would mean the world to me!
Amanda Doyle, aka Sister, quoted one of my poems on the podcast We Can Do Hard Things last year! (It was unpublished at the time, but can now be found in Open Things.)
Here’s the full poem:
that new quiet
just because i am overwhelmed
doesn’t mean you are too much
sometimes even the birds
sing too loudly for me
and i have to close the windowbut in that new quiet
i can better dream
of the utter gift and beauty(that is birdsong)
(that is you)
And Aarik Danielsen wrote a lovely little review of Open Things in his weekly round up, The Friday Five:
The humanity stretches wide and runs deep through Kantrowitz’s new collection as the poet pushes past unknowing to celebration; honors the late Sinead O’Connor by naming just a few of the many, many forms of art; tries to turn a Mark Twain notion into a sustainable diet; and makes daily bread from poems.
Kantrowitz’s forever gift is allowing readers to feel seen and understood in her verses, me especially in these:
“… you build up a kind of / structured hopelessness / whose jagged edges and reset bones / bear a faint resemblance / to strength”
Here is the full poem that Aarik quotes:
a faint resemblance
what doesn’t kill you
doesn’t always make you strongersometimes it just makes you
so used to almost dying
while people offer platitudes
instead of helpthat you build up a kind of
structured hopelessnesswhose jagged edges and reset bones
bear a faint resemblance
to strength
In other book news, Blessings for the Long Night is currently less than $9 on Amazon! If you liked my first book, The Long Night, this is a companion to it, geared toward those dear souls who are struggling with depression, but, I think, worth reading if you are just feeling discouraged. Blessings uses the seasons as a metaphor and structure, and begins in the fall, so this would be a perfect time to pick it up, for you or for a friend!
And speaking of fall, it was around this time of year in 2019 that I began writing my “peace poems” into Twitter every night. Those would eventually become my book 365 Days of Peace: Benedictions to End Your Day in Gentleness and Hope. 365 Days makes a great holiday gift, as well! You can support your local bookstore by ordering it through Indie Bound, or, if it’s easier, it’s available on Amazon as well.
And I wanted to share one more thing with you all: A conversation between DL Mayfield and Tori Williams Douglass that I found really fascinating and healing. DL has been having some amazing guests on their podcast, Healing is My Special Interest, but I think Tori might be my favorite so far.
I hope you all are finding joy in meaning in your lives, in making art, or creating ritual, or in some other way that feels right to you. Thank you so much for being here. It really means so much to me.
In love and hope,
Jessica