A Letter to My Publisher

The purpose of this blog is to let you know something about my recently published fifth collection of poems, “The Biographer,” and to tell you where you can get copies. You can buy copies inscribed by me to you at davidmkatz59@gmail.com. Unsigned copies are available from the publisher, Dos Madres Press. Please email me to arrange readings, which I’ll be happy to give at all manner of venues. Below is a slightly edited letter I wrote accompanying the book to Robert Murphy, the executive editor of Dos Madres Press. I believe the letter can serve as an introduction to the book and a decent explanation of some of my intentions. Below that is the sonnet from the book that is reprinted on the back cover. -- DMK

 February 13, 2024

 My Dear Robert,
I am attaching "The Biographer, Poems by David M. Katz,” my new manuscript, for your consideration for publication by Dos Madres. The book title is mainly drawn from the title piece, my longest poem to date. I call it "a verse novella," especially to draw attention away from the temptation by today's readers to read every poem as a piece of the literal autobiography of the poet. The poem, while heavily researched and laden with crucial themes that are dear to me (i.e. immigration, child abandonment, the elusiveness of memory, Judaism. etc.), is entirely fictional and narrated by a woman. It's composed in strictly counted syllabic stanzas in the manner of Marianne Moore, a tutelary spirit of the poem and of the book as a whole.

The book title also encompasses the other poems of the book, practically all of which I'd call "biography-adjacent"-- i.e. autobiographical, memoirish, personated. Early family drama and recollections play a central part, as do my usual cast of presiding poetic deities, this time including the likes of Hart Crane, Cavafy, Delmore Schwartz, Poe, Dickinson, Joyce, Pound, Rilke, Miss Moore, as well as your glorious self, represented by an epigraph. We abide in the paradise of other poets.

I have ordered the poems and assigned them page numbers with an eye toward providing the shorter poems with their ideal mates on facing pages and to providing a single verso-recto spread for the two-page poems.

I am attaching a photo of myself in a straw hat, which I think might be a welcome change. If you choose to accept the book, I will as always put myself in the hands of Elizabeth [Murphy, Dos Madres artist and designer] in terms of the cover and design. I am attaching visuals which she might find appropriate and/or stimulating. The Miró painting is the one I refer to in "Miró’s Intention"; the others are suggestive of scenes in the long poem.

 This book is very close to my soul. I hope it will find some connection to yours.

 With deep respect,

David

David M. Katz

Are You Still Drinking, Dad?

Are you still drinking, dad? He wouldn’t say
At first, or, rather, couldn’t. I’d never asked,
And he may have wondered if he’d got away
Without the need to answer for his lapse.
I thought it was a decade since he’d quit.
It might have been. He might have had one shot,
A rye to ease the future shock a bit;
Sweet Gypsy Rose; cheap peach or apricot
Liqueur. I said I’d be a father soon,
And he was miles away across the phone
On some highway with a cowboy tune
Fading far behind. He always drank alone.
It’s now or never, dad, I might have said.
Before my son was born my dad was dead.