"Impeccable Kindness" - My First Poetry Collection Is Out

Buy Impeccable Kindness on Smashwords (it will be available on other websites shortly - I'll update when that happens)

Good news, well for me at least. After years of unsuccessful scoping out my poetry collection to poetry journals, publishing houses, and editors alike - I decided to go the ebook route once again and self-publish. I understand I could have done things the traditional and probably more "respectable" way, but I don't have the energy to withstand so much rejection or straight out ghosting (for lack of a better term). It's been complete for a while, and I looked into vanity presses, but aside from Lulu nothing stuck out. So TL;DR - if you're wondering why I chose self-publishing yet again, there you have it. I'm at the point where I don't have the energy to be meant with continuous silence from the world. If I want my stuff out there, I'll find a way to get it out there, no problem.

The poems contained in this collection cover the time period of 2009 to 2020. It's not every poem I wrote during this time (God no) but it does encompass some of the works I'm most proud of having written. Several of these poems deal with a specific situation in my life that was extremely painful. However, what differentiates those poems from other pieces I've written on heartbreak and love lost is that I was coming to terms with how much damage I had done. I was disgusted with myself, to put it plainly. There was a person I used to care about deeply years ago and I had behaved abhorrently, with some respect to the fact of how heavily I was self-medicating in this time. So often I would say terrible things and have no memory of them, which is a really shitty thing to admit, but it's the truth. When we parted ways I could not fault her. I had done so much harm; I couldn't imagine she would ever forgive me. Which left me with self-forgiveness, something that took me quite some time to comprehend. Ultimately I had to live with myself in the wake of everything. I had to continue to exist. It took me a long time but I eventually was able to - probably took me over a year - and thanks to friends and therapy, I began to see I wasn't some terrible monster I feared I was after this whole traumatic experience. It did teach me a lot, though. I mean, it has informed greatly the way I treat my current partner - and it's actually one of several reasons I chose to give up drinking (for the most part) this year.

So all that personal stuff aside, some of these poems date back to my poetry workshop at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2009 (a slightly magical time in my life) and some of these poems are more composite/slightly fictionalized experiences. The last poem I wrote was "Light Years," and I swiped the title from The National song of the same name because I couldn't think of a proper title for it. That one was the most removed from reality piece I wrote - I woke up in the middle of the night with it sitting in my head and felt the urge to write it down in my phone notes.

It's a super pithy read (I know I because I read it myself several times and it didn't take me more than a half-hour max). I closed things on a hopeful note, with a poem that has a slightly more positive spin to it than its counterparts.

Honestly, thanks for reading, buying, supporting this collection in any way. It's not unappreciated - and if you send me proof that you bought a copy, I'll donate the dollar I get from the sale to a cause of your choice. If you don't, that's all good too. 

And if you don't buy it that's cool too. I know several of my friends have already, and that's been super kind of them. The quickest way to my heart is to support my writing, so THANK YOU immensely. 

Now that this is out in the wild, I plan to follow up with a few other collections - one a retrospective of my much older writing (think 20 years old) and one some stuff I've written in the last year. The retrospective should be out around this Christmas, and the newer collection will be more like Spring 2022.