On the Eve of a New Book Release
My debut poetry collection A Symphony of Your Own Destruction comes out tomorrow, 24 October. I have a lot of heavy thoughts about it.
I've been publishing books for almost 13 years. I've been publishing online for over 20 and in print through other publications for 22.
And yet, each experience feels different.
By this time tomorrow, people are able to read (through eBook or audiobook) or order a paperback copy of A Symphony of Your Own Destruction: A Collection of Horror in Verse. I'm excited, but also contemplative.
Poetry has been a thorn in my side for much of my life. I remember being in elementary school and middle school and being told my work wasn't enough.
The memory burned in my mind forever is from 7th grade English class. We were given a copy of Edgar Alan Poe's "The Bells" to read and analyze. Then, we had to create our own version of the poem inspired by the structure and style of the poem.
I remember matching Poe line for line, syllable for syllable, rhyme for rhyme, to use his structure for my own version of horror. I was so proud of what I came up with. It was creepy, undeniably my own work, but also a clear connected text to Poe's masterpiece.
The teacher failed me.
The teacher failed me because my use of Poe's cadence, rhythm, and rhyme scheme meant my thinking wasn't creative enough.
In other words, I was punished for actually doing what the teacher asked for in the assignment--create your own poem inspired by the structure and style of the poem. I was devastated. My family got involved after my teacher wouldn't even discuss the grading with me. It eventually went to the 6-12 grade director for ELA curriculum who overrode the initial grade, complimented me on my work, and spoke to the teacher about actually grading based on his own rubric and assignment prompts.
The damage had already been done. I had failed at poetry. Therefore, I was bad at it.
I would write poems when forced to in creative writing classes. My grades were good. I would get compliments. I even had some of it successfully submitted for competitions, scholarships, and professional publications, but I knew I was no poet. I had already failed at that.
When I say this moment is burned in my memory, I mean it. I can see my 7th grade English teacher's smirk as he hands me my failing paper in the computer lab. I can hear my peers laughing that Gannon finally failed something. I can feel the tears roll down my cheeks as I try to ask the teacher what I did wrong and all he can say is I didn't demonstrate creativity by modeling my poem after the poem the assignment was based on. It's terrifying.
Then I shared a poem on TikTok and in my defunct (for now) podcast Spookier Times; the revised version is in A Symphony of Your Own Destruction. People really responded to it. I was told it was scary and thematically important. I was told to do more. I was told I was good at this.
I didn't believe them, of course. I had already failed at poetry. Poetry was my little way of telling stories that didn't have a clear enough narrative structure to stand alone.
Then I got brave. I included poetry as the framing device of Holiday Spirits. People liked it. I finally started to believe that maybe I could do it again.
A Symphony of Your Own Destruction: A Collection of Horror in Verse is a product of 26 years of anxiety, trauma, and OCD-perseverations on my failure as a poet. I strike out at the impossible demands of artists in my own way in this collection and dedicate it to my fellow artists fighting for their place in the world.
How the world responds to my work is the world's business. I can call myself a poet.