MY STORY
I’m the author of the nonfiction book, Writing and the Spiritual Life: Finding Your Voice Within, from McGraw-Hill. My first collection of poetry, Territory of Wind, came out from Many Names Press, in 1998. About that book, poet Al Young said, “Vecchione’s compass of feeling, thought and memory point forever towards ‘the hum and buzz of the inner hive,’ where everything starts out sacred and stays that way.” Since the publication of Territory of Wind, I’ve been writing poems and storing them in that inner hive. Now is the time to bring them into the light. My forthcoming book, The Knot Untied, is the culmination of these years of writing.
The publishing world has become an extremely difficult one, based significantly on the bottom line. Rather than enter that fray, I’d like The Knot Untied to be published by the community of people who want to read it. This project is a first venture in what I’m calling Community Publishing. Purchase your copy of the book in advance, or give one as a gift, and support its publication. Contribute at a higher level and your name will be included in the book’s acknowledgements. Perhaps you’d care to opt for a perk that entitles you to a reading and workshop in your home for a group of your friends.
The Knot Untied will be published in the spring of 2013. The first two events have just been scheduled: a reading/signing at Bookshop Santa Cruz and one at The Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California.
THE IMPACT
Have you always dreamed of being a book publisher? Now’s your chance! Your support will make it possible for these poems to live in the pages of a book, to be read by others. Even if being a publisher isn’t on your bucket-list, a love of reading poetry is reason enough to join in. Poetry can shorten the divide between people. It shows us how connected we are to each other and lights a path through the forest.
WHAT WE NEED AND WHAT YOU WILL GET
The amount needed to produce The Knot Untied is $5,500. Lucky for me, graphic designer, Jerry Takigawa, and I are trading services, so that significant part of the project is covered, and it ensures a gorgeous-looking book. The cover art is my own.
Everyone who contributes $25 or more will receive a signed copy of the book, approximately 80 pages.
Those who contribute $75 or more will also have their name included in the book’s acknowledgements.
OTHER WAYS YOU CAN HELP
Help me untie this knot by spreading the word! Tell your poetry-loving friends about this project and encourage them to participate.
Suggest this title to your local bookstore.
Organize a reading in your community.
A SELECTION OF POEMS FROM THE KNOT UNITED
SING FOR YOUR SUPPER
What if singing
was how you earned your living—
each day, year after year.
The sky above you is blue.
Clouds billow like white dresses.
They are yours
though you do not own them.
Your voice flickers
like a pinwheel of color.
Old uncle has his tune,
as do your sisters and cousins.
Every answer has its question.
Songs, little melodies,
are your job,
for which you never
earn any money.
You live in a house
in a tree.
Rarely do your feet
touch the ground.
Imagine!
MY FRIEND MEMORIZES HER GRANDSON’S FACE
In the kitchen, with the summer party going on outside,
you say, “When the baby was sick,
I climbed in bed beside him,
because it is too easy to forget,
and I want to remember.”
You remember the furrowed brow in sleep,
flushed cheeks, the unrehearsed perfection of his mouth,
the jewel box of a little fevered face.
What will you keep in your purse,
in the zippered clutch of memory?
Everything changes.
And too soon,
too soon.
CLIMB
Once we crossed Broadway at 153rd St. there was the A & P,
the shopping carts glaring in the summer sun, lined up
at the ready like a parade before the start whistle.
And beyond that there was the big hill.
Even at five, I didn’t like exertion,
especially because the top of the hill hadn’t much to offer,
except the cool interior of the big, stone church
that I preferred to the heat of city sunlight.
For a moment I’d be relieved to be inside, happy even.
The cool darkness made me so, and the surprise, each time,
though I always knew what was coming,
when I dipped my fingertips in the holy water
and the chill startled my forehead awake
and made me forget about outside, the climb
that had tired me and quickened my breath.
After blessing myself, not that I ever felt blessed,
my hand would fall back inside my mother’s hand,
clasping it,, the way one holds something
she’s afraid of losing.
Of course I couldn’t have foreseen a loss of innocence,
but I did sense change was on the horizon
like cats know an earthquake’s coming and prick up their ears
before the ground’s slightest tremor, and I knew I would endure.
I would not blot out like my vision did for a moment
upon entering the dark sanctuary from the glare
of shopping carts, the sharpness of the sun.
But something in me would want to shut, would be inclined to,
like the bold church doors, heavy on their hinges,
a compelling desire, to not have to keep standing and shining
as I was driven to by the slight but insistent push of my mother’s hand
on my back as I approached the altar of my life.
