This morning my friend Julie said I should consider putting something like this right at the beginning: Will you order my book, Lacquer is a Thrilling Word? If you like strange, risky, inventive prose and poetry, surprises inside language, or if have enjoyed any of my plays, monologues, stories, or essays, or if you like writers like Lydia Davis, Mary Ruefle, or Gertrude Stein, you might like this work too. Here are two ways to pre-order:
Here’s an another way to pre-order: Send $24.99 per book along with your mailing address by 3/20: VENMO Order-
Also, will you come to my reading this Saturday night 2/28 on zoom? 7:30 CST: Here is the invite: Virtual Poetry Reading
I am not a merchant, a dealer, or a retailer. I do not vend nor do I have much experience in vending. I am not a vending machine either although, of all objects to be, I could do worse. Also, merchandising is a good, long word with an s that sounds like a z, but as to what merchandising entails? I really don’t know.
But what if I did know and I was great at it? I’m just pretending, but say the thing I had to vend was the book I am already wishing more people would purchase. What then? I’m going to do a 10 plus 1.
I can’t remember where I learned this strategy, but I’ve been using it for years. Here’s how it works: If you have a problem to solve, you think of 10 possible solutions and then push for 1 more. Yes, it is 11, but sometimes there is something about the 10 plus 1 that makes something unexpected come through. (Also, any of ideas can be ridiculous or impossible-seeming.)
How to sell at least 103 more copies of a book of poetry and short prose while not being a merchant.
6. (This one was Avi’s idea) Write your name in the dirt on the side of a filthy CTA bus. This will be free advertising.
7. Have friends go into libraries and bookstores asking for your book. Have them ask the librarian or book store clerk to look up the book. When they say it is still in pre-order until March 20th, pretend to order 10 copies on your phone and then run out the door as if you are in a rush. This will create buzz.
8. Go to O’hare airport. If you see a QR code, place the QR code for your book on top of it. Yes, people might think they are ordering more gigabytes, but they’ll likely be better off down the road with a book.
9. Have a reading on zoom. Don’t sabotage it. Share your work.
10. Find as many ambassadors of sovereign nations as you can. Go to Embassies. Find out where the ambassadors like to hang out. Ask them if they’d like to be an ambassador of something else, something like a book of poetry for example. Say you will be an ambassador for their country, if they will be an ambassador of your book. Ask them if they have flags on toothpicks you could wave and you’ll provide bookmarks for them to wave. Win/win.
Plus 1: Find a high school with burnt-out, stressed-out English teachers in it. Volunteer to take over their classes for a week. Bring inflatable mattresses and eye masks so the teachers can rest. Lead a poetry unit using the poems of your friends, other poems, and some of your poems. Have the students write poems. When the principal sees how relaxed the teachers are and the students going on and on about sonnets, they will decide the whole high school should be dedicated to poetry and poetry books including yours and spend the budget on books instead of PSAT tests and test prep materials.
*I’ve decided to try #9 first.
Next: A Correction
For some reason my podcast of three conversations I had with Wendy Cole was cut short. Sorry! Here is the full podcast: https://substack.com/@barriecole/note/p-189038569?r=12muxh&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
And a Scene Too
This past Saturday, my friends A.T. and Douglas came over to read through Reality is an Activity an older play of mine about how poetry might save the world. It was fun to hear again for the first time in a long, time. Here’s an excerpt in which Helen, Miranda, and Fred watch the actual audience of the play as if they are reading a poem:
HELEN
Fred, let me explain: We look at each audience as if we are looking at a poem, a sonnet in particular, a sonnet with extra features.
MIRANDA
We observe them row by row. You can see their sorrows and joys that way, their character as it were.
HELEN
Every four rows is a quatrain and the two front rows are the couplet. If there are more or less than fourteen rows or, if there are empty seats, we call those sections free verse and sometimes we group them into stanzas but sometimes we do not. It all depends.
MIRANDA
Are you enjoying the thing of it Fred? Don’t you find them captivating? Isn’t it fun to be able to wonder aloud and watch something at the same time? There’s hardly a place in the world where people can do that. We’re so lucky.
FRED
I find it a bit overwhelming and I have to, I actually really do have to use the bathroom.
HELEN
So Fred, if there are 13 ways of looking at a blackbird as Wallace Stevens outlines in his well known poem 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird why then what else, what else? A blackbird is rather arbitrary and so, if there are thirteen ways of looking at one, why then, there must be at least thirteen ways of looking at anything at all, perhaps even more than thirteen.
FRED
Oh? Like what?
HELEN
A cloud perhaps, a child, a whale, a wall, a floor, a chair…
MIRANDA
A table!
HELEN
A home, a country, or situation: anyone or anything at all, even you Fred, even you. Poetry offers instructions. We’ll probably end up writing some sort of pamphlet elucidating all of this. Do you think we should write one?
MIRANDA
Definitely. I am such a fan of pamphlets, they’re wonderfully portable.
HELEN
We’ll probably need more money from the foundation for pamphlets Fred. Best to just give us one lump sum and we’ll take it from there.
FRED
I am not at liberty to…
MIRANDA
We are watching them undergo something very private and it is never boring. How could it be boring to watch a poem watch a play? It’s as if we are watching them read a book without pages. Sometimes it feels a bit wrong to look at them because they are probably quite sure that they are the ones looking and not the ones being looked upon. Isn’t that funny somehow? But we’ve come to see that they are in the role of the audience and although it is true that we are placing them in that role for the play that we are watching about them, they are also pretending.
FRED
Oh?
HELEN
Yes, they are pretending that the actors in the play they are watching are real people. So, if you think about it, it’s all fully reciprocal.
FRED
I don’t understand.
HELEN
They are pretending the actors are real and we are pretending they are actors.
FRED
But what is everyone pretending about you?
(Miranda and Helen consider this for the first time.)
MIRANDA
That’s a very good question. I mean, they can’t see us, but if they could, well then, then what?
HELEN
Perhaps you have some insight into that Fred?
FRED
I definitely do not.
MIRANDA Sometimes I want to sing to them even though they can’t see or hear us. I want to tell them things.
FRED
Oh? Like what?
MIRANDA
My thoughts.I want to perform my thoughts for them somehow, like, well, like a monologue I suppose. I want to tell them that I think a better thing to call a thesaurus would be a synonym compendium. I want to tell them how wonderful I think it is that the word synonym sounds so much like cinnamon, but also how sad it is that there is no synonym for cinnamon because cinnamon is a spice; it just is exactly what it is, just one thing, unless you also count it as a color, which I do. One synonym for cinnamon the color is umber and that makes me feel better about the whole situation.
FRED
That’s what you would tell them if they could hear you?
MIRANDA
Yes.
HELEN
What would you say?
FRED
I would definitely ask them where on earth the closest restroom is.
HELEN
Do you want to know something interesting Fred, about audiences?
FRED
Not really I…
HELEN
The audience does everything that the actors do.They forget their lines or blocking or where they are supposed to be altogether. They stop paying attention. They think too little or too much. Self-consciousness is a tricky thing. Sometimes they get carried away or refuse to be transported. So much goes into their roles.
MIRANDA
You can learn a lot about people when you look at them looking, when you watch them watch.
HELEN
Sometimes they miss their cues and mistakenly believe that a pause indicates applause.
MIRANDA
All of them want to have sex.
FRED
You’re just making all this up.
MIRANDA
No we’re not! There are more things in heaven and earth, Fred, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. What do you see, when you look at them?
FRED
I guess I…I guess I see… I just well, I see people.
MIRANDA
Just people?
FRED
Well, yes.
MIRANDA
It just so happens Fred, that when they clap, their hands look like wings. And when they laugh, their laughter really does comes in waves, like an ocean. Sometimes, we look at each one of them and imagine how he will look in ten years.
FRED
Not well, I imagine.
MIRANDA
You’d be surprised.
HELEN
Also, Fred, we’ve noticed that in plays without formal intermissions the audience takes an intermission anyway; a recess of sorts. They leave for a few minutes without ever getting up from their seats. If their phones are in their pockets, they touch their pockets or they look at their programs or they look at their watches to see the time. It is possible that an intermission is contagious, and if so, the actors might catch it and begin to think about their other roles in life and also what they might like to eat or drink later, after the show. Some take an intermission whether they are in a theater or not, they just take one. And some have an intermission that never ends, it last their whole lives.
MIRANDA
It is as if they are online forever.
FRED
How awful!
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