An update on my chapbook

[kellyrfineman]

Just last month my first-ever chapbook came out. It's called The Universe Comes Knocking, and it's available from Maverick Duck Press. And it's already into its second printing (not that they put print-run numbers into their books), but still...). And I can say it's transcontinental, since my good friend Angela De Groot sent copies to England as well as Australia. So cool, yes?



Know what else? It's garnered some lovely reviews online. Here's one at Finding Wonderland.

Here's a favorite poem from it:

Socratic Method
by Kelly Ramsdell Fineman

Heeding the warnings of his daimonium
did not prevent Socrates' death.
An old man of 70, he drank the hemlock
provided to him, laid himself down,
reminded his friend to pay a debt,
then quietly gave up the ghost.

Along a mountain trail in New Hampshire,
a hemlock tree has followed Socrates' example.
If it could talk, Socratic method might determine
whether it was felled by its own hubris or assailed
by hangers-on. No matter.
Like Socrates, it returns to the earth.

Feeding on its rot, lichen has claimed its trunk,
an apple-green rash spreading across its surface,
bramble-like clusters of pale green fairy hair
erupting improbably at junctures and joints.
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

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