Reader Meet Author: Howie Good

If you write the most beautiful, most eloquent, most profound story ever, but no one ever reads it what have you accomplished. Just like any other endeavorer it is a balancing act between creative control and visibility. Around the world a tremendous amount of time and energy (and yes, money) is being poured into creating chapbooks and broadsides that are only read by a devote few. So, the question is what does it take to get a broader audience? If you look back at the last few years in the literary career of Howie Good the answer may go in a few different directions, but still boil down to determination.

Last month, Howie Good released his first full-length collection of poems, Lovesick. Howie, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of eight poetry chapbooks, but it may be this collection that finally finds it way into the hands of the broader reading public. Regardless, Howie has crafted a collection of mostly prose poems (or flash fiction) that capture a wide range of thoughts and emotions.

Recently, Howie was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): Lovesick is your first full-length collection, what can you tell us about Lovesick?
Howie Good (HG): For one thing, it's long for a poetry book -- almost 140 pages. It collects most of the free verse and prose poetry I have had published over the past five or six years in journals and chapbooks. For another, it's a dream come true. I have wanted to publish a book of poetry ever since I started writing poetry when I was 14 years old.

OA: Does a full-length collection feel more substantial than a chapbook?
HG: Well, it can be found for sale on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble web sites, which isn't the case with any of my chapbooks. You really got to hunt for those -- or have me arrive on your doorstep with an armload -- to find them.

OA: How did you get involved with The Poetry Press?
HG: Poetry Press is the poetry imprint of Press Americana, which also publishes an online journal called Review Americana. I was invited to submit a sample of eight or 10 poems with an eye toward possibly doing a book after the journal had published a few of my poems in two separate issues. The sample must have passed the test because I was then invited to submit a larger sample of 40 or so poems. Those, too, passed because I was then invited to submit a book-length manuscript. The whole process took about a year. I expected to hear at every point of decision "Thanks, but no thanks." I was flattered just to be invited to submit. I never thought that I would actually have a full-length poetry book published by a legitimate press. I mean, many of my poems are about the pain and disappointment inherent in life. Why would I believe this experience would be any different? But it has been. . . so far.

OA: How involved were you in the design and overall appearance of the book?
HG: I wasn't involved at all. My contract stipulated that the editors at the press had complete control over the design of the book. Which was OK with me. I'd rather concentrate on writing anyway. Out of curiosity I did ask to see the cover before the book went into production, and the
editors were nice enough to comply with my request.

OA: How closely do you look at form when you are writing? Your poems range in form, but a lot of the pieces in this collection could almost be considered flash fiction. Is that something you look at?
HG: You're right. What I consider to be prose poems others might very well consider to be flash fiction. When I submit to journals, I call them by whichever name the editors seem to prefer. But if I were hooked up to a polygraph and asked which they are, I would have to confess they're prose poems. Writers of flash fiction tend to be concerned with story and character as much as
writers of longer fiction are. I'm not. While my prose poems may contain suggestions of a story or silhouettes of characters, the pieces are far more about mood -- of a
place, a moment, an experience.

I do pay attention to form. Poems become prose poems when the lines of poems can't accommodate what I want to say or can't facilitate my search for something to say.

There's another consideration for me, too. I appreciate the fact that a prose poem looks like an ordinary paragraph, but doesn't behave like one. When you see a poem on a page, you know immediately that you're dealing with a special literary form, something esoteric. But when you look at a prose poem, it looks like any other piece of prose -- a paragraph from a textbook or a newspaper. I like the idea that a prose poem can reverse or at least challenge the expectations that readers bring to prose -- that, for example, a sentence will have a certain logic or that a paragraph will develop a clear idea and have a readily identifiable destination. A prose poem doesn't conform to such rules. In fact, it seems to me that a prose poem gains in power and originality in proportion that it can mimic the rules while simultaneously subverting them.

OA: What is more rewarding having this collection published or having it assigned in a college classroom?
HG: I occasionally heard in the past from instructors who were teaching a poem or two of mine, but a whole book of my
poetry being assigned in a college class? That may not be as rewarding as having the book published in the first place, but it's a lot cooler, don't you think?

OA: What's next for Howie Good?
HG: Write, write, write.

I also have a couple of chapbooks forthcoming. The Blue Hour Press is scheduled to publish an e-chapbook of mine titled MY HEART DRAWS A ROUGH MAP in October. It's a
series of 19 interrelated prose poems. And Publishing Genius is scheduled to publish another e-chap, this one of poems and prose poems, in early 2010. It's called LOVE SURROUNDS YOU LIKE A POSSE IN BULLETPROOF VESTS.

Lastly, at this very moment, I'm serving as guest poetry editor for Issue 29 of the online literary journal Right Hand Pointing, which is due out in January. The presiding genius of Right Hand Pointing, Dale Wisely, just published yet another e-chap of mine, STILL LIFE WITH FIREARMS. It's available for free here.

For more information on Howie Good please visit his website.