Michael Cantor's Life in the Second Circle - Poems: Release Announcement
 

YAHOO!

Let me be the first to say so.

Wonderful cover, Michael. Can't wait to see the rest.

Rick

Congratulations, Michael, and congratulations to you, Alex. That's a beautiful cover.

The sound you hear in the near distance is my budget exploding once again. :)

Ed

Here's to the exploding budget.
Congrats, Michael. High time, high standards!

Nemo

High time is right!

(And wendy's blurb is hilarious!)

Just great, Michael - simply great!

Cally

I thought Alfred hit it right on the nose.

Huge congratulations Michael!

Terrific news, Michael!

This and many more. . .

Ralph

Michael, I'm thrilled for you! Many congratulations! Next time I head for Newburyport I shall request your autograph.

Best,
Jean

Hurrah, Michael!

Congratulations, Michael! It looks great. I look forward to reading it.

Susan

Purchased and on the Kindle (where it looks good)!

Thanks, all. The help and encouragement I received on the Sphere was a huge factor in developing and directing whatever skills went into this book, and is very much appreciated.

I'm pleased that a number of you commented on the cover. The illustration is an etching (which Val and I own a copy of and love) by Fritz Scholder, a noted Native American artist.

Great news, Michael! Bravo!

Charlotte

PS: Just saw your note about the cover painting--it IS lovely.

Again lovely cover art, congrats Michael, good on you.

J

a hearty l'chaim!

Can I say how pleased I am that a Kindle version is available from the get-go. It is just easier to buy a book that way.

I also prefer books in Kindle format - especially poetry. Kindle makes it so much easier to tear your favourite page out and pin it somewhere easy to find.

(Well, I guess tearing the page out isn't too difficult with hardcopy either. It's fitting the thing back in that causes the problems).

I treasure the Pudding House chappy, but I'm delighted to see this is 130 pages. Michael, it must seem well worth all those years of effort just to memorize Deborah's foreward.

Congratulations, Michael! I can't wait to get my copy!

And Wendy, actually, I think my late mother would have LOVED Michael's book ;) !!!

Hearty congratulations! There goes the book-budget resolution, again!

I've been waiting a long time for this, and now I can't keep up with all these long-awaited new books! Congratulations big-time, Michael--and Alex too.

Congratulations, Michael!
Good luck with this major achievement!
Regards

Alex has done rather an extraordinary thing by deciding to publish not just the winner, but the finalists as well for the Able Muse book competition. Kudos to our leader. Alas, I was unable to attend Pooch's reading in Grand Forks last night, but I'll see him at West Chester, and I'll see Michael there or in Newburyport in June.

Congratulations, Michael - as others have said, it's a beautiful book - can't wait to (re)read it.

Frank

Congratulations, Michael.

I've just ordered it and eagerly await its arrival.

Jayne

It's a great book - with a fine Venetian poem, I'm happy to say.

Congratulations great looking book!

Tricks of the Amazon.com masters (Not I -- someone else gave me the idea): it turns out that if you order Life in the Second Circle on Amazon.com and pre-order Alicia Stallings' Olives at the same time, you can get free shipping: plus, at least in my case, they broke up the shipment so the Second Circle was shipped the same day it was ordered. Not a bad deal.

Ed

Hearty congrats, Michael. I'm looking forward to this.

Dave

Well done and well deserved, Michael. Looking forward to reading it.

John

Congrats Michael!
Well done. Elle

Congratulations, Michael.

I tried to order it from Amazon UK but the link does not work.

David, two nations divided by a common retailer.

David - Amazon UK and the EU sites are slower to update their database. Once they do, the link will work.

...Alex

Again, thank you all for the good words and the encouragement - I hope the book lives up to the cover illustration.

I would also like to echo something Aaron mentioned on his site, and thank Alex, and others he worked with (I know that Julie Sih, for one, was involved, and very helpful) for a terrific job of proofreading and correcting - tightening the manuscript by catching and eliminating numerous inconsistencies and outright oversights and errors.

The manuscript was a proofreader's nightmare because of the nature of the poems and the ground covered. I wander through spelling errors and missing diacritical marks in English, Japanese, French, Portugese and Spanish, plus some invented and/or delberately ungrammatical language; there is a good deal of dialogue or internal monologue involved, and I used italics - or quote marks - or a bizarre mixture of both - to guide the reader; foreign and American place names and film references are sprinkled throughout; there is no "standard" and absolute English spelling for some of the Japanese words I used; I interwove two or even three threads of action and counterpoint in the same poem (in one case with haiku stanzas simultaneously alternating with nonce iambics); and all of this was very dependent on fonts and indentations and punctuation and other "guidepost" tricks to keep the reader on track and the poem flowing.

The problems were that my handling of the guideposts and the various title and foreign names was (a) careless and inconsistent at times within individual poems, and (b) much more inconsistent from poem-to-poem. The poems were written over a number of years, and I was writing poem-by-poem, not thinking in terms of a manuscript. And as long as I was publishing one poem at a time it more or less worked. However, once everything was assembled into a manuscript, one poem played (or didn't play) against another, and the lack of a consistent template was potentially very confusing and distracting. I didn't notice this because I knew what I was saying (and because Im a bit of a slob.) But Alex and the other proofers did, and their diligence made this a much tighter and better book. I learned some important lessons in the assembling and checking of this manuscript. My thanks to all.

Even so I managed to order the Kindle version by going to Amazon UK and searching for Michael Cantor.

Thrilled for you, Michael. Major congrats!!!!!

David - Yes, to the Kindle. Those propagate faster into Amazonia because they're fully Amazon-controlled. The hardcopy come from external publishers and distributors, hence the longer lead time for it to show up in some of the Amazon shops, especially, in Amazon sites in a different country from that of the publisher/distributor.

Cheers,
...Alex

Mine seemed like it was delivered overnight. It was probably a two-day turn around, however.

Michael--what an accomplishment! I'm really enjoying reading these poems as you have them arranged. Congrats.

RM