Weirdbook — First Annual Witches Issue

I meant to post this many months ago, but last year turned out to be rather difficult and all of my free time was spent pursuing other endeavors.  One of my many new year’s resolutions—the most important is to finish my long poem, thus completing my book—is to write more Blog posts, which includes existential inspirations, publication updates, art- and literature-related musings, and travel stories both new and old—adventures in Switzerland and Italy being foremost in my mind.

With that being said, I am once again pleased to announce the publication of two new poems, both of which were published last year in Weirdbook edited by Douglas Draa.  Although I was already honored to be included in this fine and well-known publication, I later found out that Stephen King’s Cthulhu Mythos short story “Gramma” was first published in Weirdbook in 1984, which made these publications even more thrilling.

In keeping with tradition of writing brief anecdotes about my published poems within my rare and badly-neglected Blog, I want to write a little about how these two pieces came to be—given that I have only published five poems since August 2016, I don’t think this is too onerous of a task.  My second accepted piece within Weirdbook, lovingly titled “Remembering the Peculiar Effects from the Sugar Witch’s Goblin-Brew”, holds a special place in my heart not only because of its subject matter (witches, both fact and fiction, interest me greatly), but also because it was published in Weirdbook’s first annual Witches Issue.  Although it may appear enigmatic and/or arbitrary to some, its conception was based on “real” and tangible inspiration, in particular my excessive consumption of sugar-laden autumn-vanilla cake balls from Whole Foods with caffeine-infused lattes and flat whites at the time, combined with my interest in the “original” witch’s potion, which, according to many writers throughout the centuries, was thought to have been a hallucinogenic flying elixir—copious amounts of caffeine and its palm-sweaty and heart-palpitating consequences can certainly feel like “flight”, followed inevitably by sugar’s sleep-persuading crash.  At times, depending on how many lattes one consumes over a period of time, such moments can feel like stress-induced madness, sitting impatiently and fidgeting about in anxious despair begging for any sort of poetic inspiration, only to end with elevated blood pressure and a frustrating loss of time; other times, however, such potions or “goblin-brews” can awaken the mind to intense imagination, soaring to new heights beyond the stars and their “supernal climes”, where ideas come so fast that one can barely keep up.  Even some bits of my bizarre ingredient list has its roots within the occult for even Lord Verulam (Francis Bacon) offers his own theory into what such odd things may have been used in flying ointments: 

The ointment that witches use is reported to be made of the fat of children digged out of their graves; of the juices of smallage, wolf-bane, and cinque-foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat. But I suppose that the soporiferous medicines are likest to do it; which are henbane, hemlock, mandrake, moonshade, tobacco, opium, saffron, poplar leaves, etc.[1]

[Painting by Luis Ricardo Falero titled Faust’s Vision (1878), also known as The Witches Sabbath, which I believe shows quite brilliantly the hallucinogenic effects from consuming such “flying ointments” or witch potions.]

There are other subtle mysteries between the lines in my piece, as any proper poem should have, but given this context I hope it makes better sense to those who have read it and wondered what the hell I was on about.

The second poem—the first of these two to be published in Weirdbook in August 2017—was born from less interesting inspiration, but its publication led to a somewhat humorous outcome that is worthy to share.  It was written about a friend whom I first met several years ago during one of my favorite art history classes from university: 17^th Century Dutch and Flemish Painting, taught by Professor Arthur K. Wheelock himself.  Not to digress, but Professor Wheelock’s passion for this very particular style of painting was not only evident and inspiring, but it was also contagious, for although I was already familiar with and admired many of the artists before his class, I became almost as passionate for them and their work afterward—especially paintings by Johannes Vermeer which I have followed religiously ever since, including visiting the 2017-2018 Vermeer exhibition at the National Gallery of Art several times since it opened in October.  This friend and I met in Professor Wheelock’s course and we have had an off-and-on friendship ever since, vexing one another over the years and losing contact with one another every so often.  She was going through a rough time during one of our friendship periods and, with a mind to cheer her up, I decided to write a little poem about her.  I quickly realized this wasn’t the best of ideas for all my poetic inspiration led me on with temptations of death and murder—although, to be fair to her, much of my writing in 2016 bordered on death, murder, and suicide, mostly by way of poison.  Needless to say, and totally punning on the sort of class we met in, the poem didn’t exactly paint her portrait in the most flattering of light.  Finishing the poem in May of 2016 I later forgot all about it until I submitted it with four others to Weirdbook later that October.  Believing it to be one of the “weaker” and least speculative poems of the submission, I was more than pleasantly surprised when I heard back from the editor in February of 2017 requesting to purchase it for an upcoming issue.  Being understandably thrilled about the prospect of a soon-to-be-published third poem I reached out to this aforementioned friend who, also understandably being thrilled, desired it to read it immediately.  I sent her the manuscript without delay.  Well, apparently the poem was indeed rather unflattering and vexed and disgusted her greatly for I haven’t heard from her since haha.  This is either a testament to my writing and ability to ruffle feathers and push buttons, or perhaps it suggests that I am no writer at all and every time I question whether or not to write I should take heed to one of Tolstoy’s favorite French proverbs:  Dans le doute, abstiens-toi[2] [When in doubt, don’t].  Either way I shall keep at it.

To those who are interested these poems are available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle format.  The Witches Issue Kindle edition is currently only .99 cents which not only contains my caffeine- and sugar-inspired witch poem, but also contains 11 other poems and 21 short stories all devoted entirely to witches.  If you decide to buy the Kindle edition, please shrink it (zoom out) just a bit so the format of my poem shows up correctly—you’ll see what I mean once you open it.  The links to each are below. 

Weirdbook Witches Issue:  
https://www.amazon.com/Weirdbook-Annual/dp/1479428485/ 

Weirdbook #36:
https://www.amazon.com/Weirdbook-36-Douglas-Draa/dp/1479429066/

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[1] Quote taken from Francis Bacon (attributed as Lord Verulam) in The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes.

[2] I first became aware of this interesting little bit of information while reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The same French proverb also appeared in War and Peace and I imagine it has appeared elsewhere in Tolstoy’s writing. It can also be translated as “When in doubt, do nothing.”