The Story of My First Book.

 

My first book is up for pre-order. I've waited for this most of my life. Here is the description: Saxophones and Dripping Faucets is a bildungsroman that demonstrates how connection stitches or shatters character and paradigm. These poems offer glimpses of iniquity, betrayal, resentment, and desire. The collection forms a searing critique of family of origin and family of choice as both implode. Here are the blurbs, which come from a dear professor/thesis advisor and a great poet/contest judge: “What’s the difference between longing and yearning? The feral, sensuous poems in Saxophones and Dripping Faucets explore the nuances of this question, each poem in search of something: the other, the best moment, pleasure, love, time, or even shame. The stakes are high, the feelings run, and the language sizzles in this great collection.”  — Michael Parker, Author of The Age of Discovery   “The poet shows us the reality of relationships, the poignancy of loss, and the fleeting yet powerful encounters that shape our lives. Each poem is a vignette that blends vivid imagery with emotional resonance, from the gritty reality of “Brick” to the haunting reverie of “Suicide Dream.” The poet’s deft touch transforms everyday objects and moments into symbols of larger truths and personal epiphanies, bittersweet portraits, often illustrating the tension between innocence and experience while reflecting the complexity of growing up.” –Christopher Salerno, Author of The Man Grave  Here is the story: I wrote most of these poems as a graduate student after the end of my first (brief) marriage and during the ending of the most inspiring love story I'd yet encountered: my parents’ marriage. This was a time of turbulence, violent grief, isolation, reconnection, and reckoning. I faced the worst impulses in myself and others and recognized the agonizing limits of love: children's for parents, parents’ for children, sweethearts for each other, husbands' for wives, and wives’ for husbands. Some of the poems address earlier pains that seemed to culminate in all this destruction. Poems from Saxophones, along with others, became my graduate thesis. The first poem I read publicly was “Brick,” a bitter and surprising poem that opens the chapbook. While I published many poems from the collection, the thesis remained in a drawer. Could I not face the encapsulation of those traumatic years? In any case, the launch of my teaching career, the life-threatening birth of my son, a series of mental health crises, difficulties raising an extraordinary child with extraordinary needs, and struggles in my new (nineteen years old today) marriage kept poetry at the margins of my life. But with a hospital release, a new treatment plan, a new home, new help and a new school for O, and the recovery J and I began, I stood under a pink full moon and had an unusual version of a midlife crisis: poetry was my calling, and I would answer it. I rewrote my thesis and sent it out several times as Little Droughts and Hurricanes. I was sorting through years of other poems as well. Then, I joined the North Carolina Poetry Society and submitted the book to their Lena M. Shull Book Prize. While LD&H didn't win, it place third, and the judge, Christopher Salerno, wrote a review that brought me to tears. I had something. After a couple more contests, I decided to whittle the collection down to a chapbook, which is typically 15-35 pages of poetry. I sent it to two contests. In the second contest, my little collection was in the top 3%: a finalist. I accepted the offer for publication. But it was real until last night, when I first saw the cover. This is my book, the distillation of my life from ages seventeen to twenty-four, with a dash of childhood as well because, of course, childhood seasons all the years of our lives. Today, I am forty years old, finally seeing the result of twenty-plus years of writing. Not everyone will like what they read in these pages. I say that all my poems contain elements of truth and elements of fiction: never all one or the other. But if you'd like to hear a story, a set of interwoven stories that formed some of the bedrock of who I am, take a look. Pre-orders will determine print run and royalties, by the way. And if you have a lofty reading goal for 2026, I can tell you from experience that chapbook are a treasure. https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/saxophones-and-dripping-faucets-by-becky-nicole-james/ L