Carol Peters' Sixty Some: A Revisitation

Back in September, I wrote a little bit about Carol Peters and the new project she'd begun: self-publishing her book Sixty Some in nearly every electronic format known, more or less to see what would happen, and as she says "to get the poems off [her] hands," to work on new ventures, and to learn how to publish a book electronically. I wrote her back recently to see how the book panned out, now that some time has passed.

Did you feel the book was successful?

Yes, I did. It satisfied my immediate goals, which were to get the poems off my hands (so I could move on with new work) and to learn how to publish a book electronically.

Did it feel as if it made its way around the poem-world, or was it more a tight cadre of people who acquired it?

I heard from many of my poetry friends who either read the book online or bought it for their Kindles. I have no idea whether anyone is buying the book from Amazon or other electronic book resellers. If they are, the numbers are too small for me to be paid, and that was what I expected. My webstats indicate that one-to-five people visit Apobiz Press for an average of 1.5 minutes per visitor per day, so those folks must be reading a poem or two. I frequently hear from people who read my poems online and from editors who ask me to send work, so that's all a treat for me.

Would you do it again?

If you mean would I publish electronically again, yes, definitely. A few months ago I made the decision to stop submitting poems to journals (unless an editor solicits me) and am posting my new finished poems on my blog. When I have enough poems for a book, and/or if I feel like making another book, I will.

Have you plans to publish any other poets?

Not with today's technology—it's too difficult with no standards. I think Apple & Google will sort that out over the next couple of years. Amazon and others will go along with whatever standard develops.

What's on the horizon for you poem-wise or book-wise?

I live. I read. I write. I returned yesterday from two months on our farm in Hawaii where I wrote far more poems than expected. We work outdoors on the land, and since the weather was usually dry, we were out nearly every day. Still, I found myself writing poems early in the morning and while easing off in the late afternoon.

I also have three book-length manuscripts out to print publishers. The books are my translations of the work of a Bolivian poet with whom I've been working for about a year and a half. I have excerpts from one of those books coming out in journals later this year.

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David Oliver Cranmer

Not Just Another Playlist Often, I sit in my swivel chair looking out the window, while jazz, country, or rock music plays. This pleasure goes on for many hours a mystic trance of sorts streaming—the glue maintaining my soul. I turn the best songs into playlists (once we called them mix tapes) puzzling over the perfect order. Does Satchmo’s “What a Wonderful World” kick off my latest list or make it the big soulful closer? And does “Mack the Knife” go higher in the set than “Summertime?” That’s an Ella Fitzgerald duet! “Foolishness? No, it’s not” whether you are climbing a tree to count all the leaves or tapping to beats. These are the joys that bring inner peace and balance (to a cold universe) lifting spirits skyward. David Oliver Cranmer ’s poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared in publications such as Punk Noir Magazine , The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly , Needle: A Magazine of Noir , LitReactor , Macmillan’s Criminal Element , and

Corey Mesler

I think of you tonight, my Beats I think of you tonight, my Beats, and I am grateful. I walked the narrow lanes of Academia and never felt at home. There were men and women in the flowerbeds, their heads full of theorems and poems. There were teachers who could lift their own weight in prose. I was lonely. I was too loose. I was a lad from the faraway country of Smarting. But I had you as so many before me. I had you and I knew secret things. I could count on you like a percussion. And now I want to say: I love you. If not for you, what? I want to say. If Allen Ginsberg did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South . He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, The Diminishment of Charlie Cain , is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On , which won The Me

Amy Holman

My mother made herself the deer with a broken leg We saw a deer through the pane into someone else’s yard. The leg moved like a tube sock pinned to the hip and half filled with sticks. I did not like to see it suffer, either. She was upset —my mother —that no one helped the doe. Was it a mother, too? As if we were the first to observe the scene. We weren’t. All had been told to let her be. My mother had suffered a destruction of the self, a divorce, and no one cared. That wasn’t true. We were grown, on our own. I agree it was hard. Yet in those moments of a cold November day, we watched a doe, disabled and enduring, walk across a yard and eat a hedge. I wish she could have seen it like that. Amy Holman is the author of the collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010) and four chapbooks, including the prizewinning Wait for Me, I’m Gone (Dream Horse Press, 2005). Recent poems have been in or accepted by Blueline,

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