Titles and nonsuch

Roy got me to thinking about titles with his post Cement Blocks and now I feel compelled to confess my scandalous past with them (titles not cement blocks) and therefore waste what began as a lovely Saturday morning full of promise. Thanks a lot Roy. They say confession is good for the soul but fail to add that it can be a little hard on the reputation, in this case the legend that I am in my own slavering and slavish mind. I'm going to make this as brief and painless as possible. Just the facts, mam.

In the days when I labored over a typewriter and burned through bottles and bottles of whiteout to come up with the ever illusive Perfect Copy, SkyRiver was a letterpress operation and I would sit amidst the half ton of antique machines and dream up titles for the books I was going publish on them, by setting my poems one backward, upside-down letter at a time. Actually I hated typesetting. The task made me very nervous and therefore the prospect of setting a page required a lot of alcohol to ready myself for the ordeal. As I prepared to begin, I enjoyed a delicious reverie over how I would slab thick black ink over the old black rollers and indent wonderful thick paper with my words. Unfortunately, by the time I felt ready to charge, I was often too drunk to focus. After a few years of that, my then partner and I split and sold the presses. I had only managed to print a few pages with a couple more set and ready to go that never got inked. But, I'm great with titles.

At the same time I had an acquaintance by the name of Cosmo who read at the same open mikes I did. He liked my writing and one night leaned over and muttered that he had recommended my name to some Who's Who list that he was on. I, of course, thought that was appropriate and showed my approval by a quick nod and mumbled something like Cool. Thanks. A few months later I got an invitation from a publisher in the UK. I was to submit my bio and list of published works for inclusion in two separate upcoming editions of Who's Who, I think one for poetry and the other women writers. I can't remember clearly.

And I don't remember who the publisher was. They were in Cambridge and their presentation was nice but I figured that if they were willing to include me sight unseen, it must have been a scam; one of those offers where they put your name in their big expensive book and then sell it to you so that you can leave the garish, gilded volume laying casually on your coffee table so your friends will notice it. I filled out the forms anyway and I'm sure you have already guessed my dilemma. Should I be a literalist and include only the things that have already made it into print (at that time individual poems mostly published in the local alt newspaper) or include titles of upcoming books I was planning to publish on my letterpress? I did wrestle with the question for at least minutes and then decided that, after all, I need to demonstrate faith in myself and so hurriedly jotted down the future titles and dashed the letter to the box before I could change my mind. So titles I've got.

To date in ... um .... reality? ... I do finally have a (draft) edition of a chapbook titled After Hours. I printed it years after SkyRiver Press died and resurrected as a digital entity but those old titles for the Who's Who are a wash. I listed several but only remember one, Watch Fire, and cringe as I write it. Obviously, I was not on the moral high ground at the time but what the heck? That is proven slippery ground for mortals such as I.