More time has passed since my last post than I like, but I have been extremely busy getting two books of mine ready for publication. First, my Selections from Saadi’s Bustan, a translation of selections from a 12th century Persian masterpiece, will be out in the next month or so from Global Scholarly Publications. That book is not yet up on the website, but its companion volume, Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan is. Second, I have just finished going over the galleys for my own first book of poems, The Silence Of Men, which is scheduled to be out from CavanKerry Press in May. (Independently of the fact that CavanKerry is publishing my book: if you are someone who reads poetry, or if you’re someone who has never read poetry but is willing to give it a try, you should check out their books; they publish good work in beautifully made books.)
Something else I’d like to celebrate/promote in terms of my own writing is this: Jonathan Penton over at Unlikely Stories has just put up on his site a pdf e-book version of My Daughter’s Vagina, a long essay of mine that he serialized last year. The pdf book has a cover by Donna Kuhn that I like a lot. There are some changes/corrections that still need to be made, and I will be sending them to Jonathan soon, but since things tend to move slowly and I do want people to know the pdf book is out, I am linking to it here.
My Daughter’s Vagina is actually part of a book-length project, Inside The Men Inside Christy Canyon, that I was once working on quite assiduously but that I have had to set aside in order to work on my translations and my own poetry books, since I know that those are actually going to be published. I am hoping that I will eventually be able to get back to this project, though, or that maybe someone will read what’s online and contact me with some interest in publishing it. There is a companion essay called “My Son’s Penis,” an long excerpt of which was published in the online journal Masthead, which is a really good literary journal. (I am proud, actually, that the work of mine that editor Alison Croggon chose to publish appears in the same issue as a series of wonderful translations of contemporary Iraqi poetry.) The third essay in Inside The Men is called “Relishing My Solitude.” This essay is the least complete of the three, though a portion of it was published in Salon.com about seven ago as “Sexual Charades in Seoul,” a title I do not like but that I did not have the authority to change.
Anyway, congratulations to me! And if anyone takes the time to read any of these pieces, I would love to hear what you think.