Small Presses, Small Losses

I'm gonna sound like I've got a paid endorsement, but one of my favorite things about Open Books poetry is their "Indoor Sidewalk Sale." It's two small tables with books under $7 or so, complete with a little café-style chair in which you can sit to make your selections. It's kind of like choosing your lobster from the tank, now that I think about it.


I found a very small chapbook there called "Sleeping Over" by Molly See, copyright 1979. I picked it up for a buck-fifty and here's why.

The Shield

Molly See

Blood thicker than abortion
washes out my child-of-the-month.


They didn't tell me when they put it in,
but I've read the shield discourages
the embryo -
it never hooks up.


Once, riding through snow I dreamed
my children of two years
met on a grassy hill.
In rows of twelve,
one line of maidens, one of youths
yellow hair and gauzy sleeves
they danced for me.




I don't usually buy chapbooks. They're slim little volumes that are easy to produce (some independent presses even have hand-cranked machines), inexpensive to manufacture and easy to slip into a bag or backpack. But there's so many of them out there that I usually go right to the big guns, something with buzz like Donald Hall's "White Apples and the Taste of Stone" which awesomely includes a CD of the poet reading selected poems from the volume. It's kind of like the toy inside your Happy Meal.


But I'm also realizing that by ignoring the little volumes I'm only encouraging the Billy Collinses and (god forbid) Rod McKuens of the world, or rather, their publishers to find that safe, fat hit. (What was Robert Duvall's line in Network? "We got ourselves a big, fat, big-titted hit!")









I need to sift through these little books more often, find that treasure from some tiny now-defunct press that probably operates out of an uncle's attic in some Midwest college town. And did I mention they're cheap? By comparison, Joan Houlihan's "The Us" set me back 17 dollars. I think it's because of all the buzz.