I meant to publish this post sometime after Skin Shift was released back in 2012 and it just never happened, probably because I borrowed info from it for various interviews last year and for the Poets & Writers profile they did on me. But still–since I did one previously for my chapbooks, let me pause and take a moment to look at the history and stats for this book project.
The first incarnation of Skin Shift was as a chapbook, which I started sending out in 2005. It consisted primarily of the poems in the “Mutatis Mutandis” section under the title Questions of Metamorphosis with a few from the “Protean Ambitions” section. In early 2007 I sent out the first full-length version of the manuscript, which included Narcissus Resists and Platos de Sal as sections. In fact, both sequences were written in tandem with the stand-alone poems to flesh out that early chapbook into a full-length manuscript, and I later popped them out as their own chapbooks when I realized they could stand on their own. My ideal reader situation was that people who were familiar with “Narcissus” and “Platos” in their chapbook incarnations would gain a new layer of context for them within the wider scope of the full-length version.
That early version of the manuscript placed as a top five finalist for the New Issues Poetry Prize, which was judged by Carl Phillips. That was prize enough, to know that Carl Phillips had read my work. The manuscript was later a finalist for the 2009 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize; not a bad track record with the whole contest system.
Other ways it changed: “The Metamorphosis Treatise”–the meditation on Kafka’s Metamorphosis in the middle of the collection–was the final section added. This project is heavily influenced by Anne Carson, among others (Alice Fulton’s Sensual Math, James Merrill’s Changing Light at Sandover), and in my efforts to recast myths of transformation and tackle the whole question of metamorphosis in as many ways possible, I found a poetic essay on a text I could not ignore would add one more facet to the idea I was turning and examining.
Now some data: according to my records, I sent out this manuscript (including its chapbook incarnation) 42 times from 2005 until 2010, solely to contests. The amount of money invested (or to try to spin it in a more positive light, the amount of money I used to support presses and other books of poetry): $982. Silly, I know. Those $20-$25 entry fees really add up! But averaging that out over six years, and I know this flattens out the stats a bit, but that’s about $165-$175 a year. Thank goodness I have a day job. And to think: it was finally picked up on the 43rd try–the only time I sent it out in 2011–when I decided to send it for the first time to an open submission period with no fee. Thank you, Sibling Rivalry Press.
I have another post drafted on The Erotic Postulate‘s stats. I’ll post that in 2014 once the book is released.