TJ Beitelman and Black Lawrence Press Team Up for a Fourth Time

I’ve been asked a number of times to describe the best part of my job as an editor. My answer: discovery. What I love about being an editor is also what I love about being a reader–finding an author who has written something wonderful, something that shifts the way I look at the world, the people in it, my place in it, the words that I use to talk about it. I have very fond memories of reading, for the first time, authors who would go on to becoming lifelong companions–Steinbeck, Atwood, Moore. Discovering their books for the first time was a delicious experience. Not only did I love what I read, but I knew that there was more to come.

As an editor, finding a true gem in the submissions pile is a thrill. And I experienced that thrill when I first read Pilgrims: A Love Story by T.J. Beitelman.  Pilgrims was an entry in the Spring, 2008 Black River Chapbook Competition. It was clear after a few pages of reading that this manuscript was going to be a top contender. By the time I finished reading, I had a very strong sense that I had found the winner. We finished reading all of the submissions to the competition and shortly thereafter contacted TJ to let him know that he’d won.

But Pilgrims was just the beginning. In 2010, Black Lawrence Press accepted In Order to Form a More Perfect Union, TJ’s full-length poetry collection. There are many things that I love about this collection, but I will borrow a line from Maurice Manning’s blurb to summarize: “The reach of this exuberant and anguished book is potent, and made more so by the force of restraint.” In short, the magic was still there. And then some.

But this would not be the last time the work of TJ Beitelman would hit me in the heartbone. After we accepted Union, TJ sent us a novel he’d be working on. John the Revelator took over my world as I read. It’s due out next year, so stay tuned. Then, just last week, I read Americana, TJ’s most recent chapbook. I’ll leave you with this, one of the poems from the new collection, which I accepted for publication mere hours after reading. But first, I’d like to return to that question about the best part of my job. The best part is discovering authors like TJ Beitelman who wow me from the beginning and keep returning with more and even better work.

 

–Yours,
Diane Goettel
Executive Editor, Black Lawrence Press

AN AUBADE FOR THE AFRICAN QUEEN AND ITS BIG BANG

       Rose:           I’m all turned around Charlie—which way is the east shore?
       Charlie:     The way we’re swimming old girl!

Had I not been zooming through the Cosmos,
as yet unfettered by material forms, I could
have told Bogey: It’s always the detonators
that take some doing. Everything’s a powder
keg: a ratty vessel taking on water or a thimble-
sized universe. No matter—it’s all waiting
to combust. The trick is the tinder. The spark.
The thing that transforms potential to kinetic.
Could be, yes, cartridges, nails, boxes of soft
wood—a makeshift torpedo at the water line.
But why think small? After all, something
touched off the exponential cosmic explosion
we’re swimming through. What’re the odds
it was a broken boat, floating in wait? Billions
and billions to one. It had to be something
like a Rose: sharp-tongued, chiseled, gorgeous
with a dirty face, obvious in her catholic charms.
In the face of such a face, even Kaiser’s doomed
navy men would freely choose to do the deed,
dutifully pledge to let no man put it asunder,
even as the impregnable world they know erupts.

 

The Grandeur is in Them and of Them

Thanks to Phil Constable and the good people at New York Journal of Books for the wonderful review of T. J. Beitelman’s Pilgrims: A Love Story. In the review, Constable writes:

Beitelman has an assured voice that cautions the reader against the excesses of modern society, the “shimmer, shine, and show,” while, at the same time using those very excesses as images and imaginings. The protagonists are searching for something, something grand and worthwhile, and in the end the grand thing they find is the realization that it is all meaningless. The grandeur is in them and of them.

You can read the entire review here.

Pilgrims: A Love Story, winner of the Spring, 2008 Black River Chapbook Competition, is available from Black Lawrence Press and Amazon.

Beitelman Broke Down. Did You Miss It?

We’re sorry for posting this so late, but T. J. Beitelman, author of Pilgrims: A Love Story had two spots on The Nervous Breakdown in July. There was the self-interview on the 17th. And there was a poem on the 24th. Happy reading!

BLP Expands Its List

If you’ve been following the BLP blog, then you know of a few recent additions to the BLP family. In January, we announced that we’d accepted Killing the Murnion Dogs by Joe Wilkins and Instructions for Killing the Jackal by Erica Wright, two new collections of poetry due out in August and September of next year, respectively. In February, we announced that Carol Guess had become a part of our crew of poets; her collection Doll Studies: Forensics will be out in the beginning of 2012. Also in February we announced the acceptance of the novel/novel-in-stories/memoir/we don’t know what we’re calling it yet other than “rad” Pulled from the River by Jon Chopan.

There’s been lots of action since February and we are very pleased to announce that we’ve added a few more authors to the BLP family and also have new titles forthcoming from authors who have published with us in the past. Next fall we will publish Marginalia for a Natural History, a collection of poems by Keith Taylor.

We’ve also accepted two new books by Marcel Jolley, winner of the inaugural St. Lawrence Book Award and author of Neither Here Nor There. His short story collection, Priors, will come out in the spring of 2012, to be followed by his novel Milk Run in the spring of 2013. We’ve also got some new blood in our stable of fiction writers. Loving You the Way I Do, short stories by Ron Savage will be published in the summer of 2012.

We’re also very pleased to announce that our translation list is expanding as well. Daniele Pantano, author of the poetry collection The Oldest Hands In The World and the translation The Possible is Monstrous has two more translations coming out from BLP in the next few years: Oppressive Light: Selected Poems by Robert Walser (Spring, 2012) and The Complete Works of Georg Trakl (Spring, 2014). We’ve also got Dream Weed, a translation of Yvan Goll poems, by Nan Watkins coming out in July, 2012.

Those of you who are fans of T.J. Beitelman (Pilgrims: A Love Story) and David Rigsbee (winner of the Spring, 2009 Black River Chapbook Competition) will be happy to know that we have full-length collections from both poets coming out in mid-2012.

And, just so you know what you have to look forward to, BLP will release the following titles before the end of 2010: Every Bitter Thing by Hardy Jones, Perishables by Tina Egnoski, Pictures of Houses with Water Damage by Michael Hemmingson, The Consequence of Skating by Steven Gillis, Triggermoon Triggermoon by JuliaCohen, Speech Acts by Laura McCullough, and The Pilot House by David Rigsbee.

We’ve currently closed submissions until August 15th while we catch up on submissions. We’re hoping to have more good news by the end of the summer once we read all of the manuscripts in our queue. As always, thanks for reading!

-Diane Goettel

Executive Editor, Black Lawrence Press

P.S. Don’t forget that the deadline for the St. Lawrence Book Award is August 31st!