Swimming Shelter - by Al Ortolani (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p><strong>Author's Note: </strong></p><p><br></p><p>The idea for writing one poem a day for 100 days emerged </p><p>slowly. In March, as we sheltered in place, I discovered that </p><p>putting poems on Facebook allowed me to communicate </p><p>with an immediacy that I usually only enjoyed at public </p><p>readings. It tasted like bacon, like strong coffee. Naively, I </p><p>thought 30 days would cover the worst of the pandemic. </p><p><br></p><p>As I considered shutting down my daily posts, returning </p><p>to sending poems out to small presses, I experienced a </p><p>sense of loss, of isolation, that troubled me. I kept writing </p><p>and posting, finding that I needed the electronic human </p><p>contact more than a vetted publication with little feedback. </p><p>Consequently, these poems have been self-published only </p><p>on my Facebook platform, and on occasion, on the Kansas </p><p>City Writer's Place website. </p><p><br></p><p>In <em>Swimming Shelter</em> the poems are arranged chronologically </p><p>as they appeared. Little has been done to revise, except for </p><p>an occasional word choice selection or punctuation edit. </p><p><br></p><p>I wrote each morning. Usually, stopping only when the </p><p>poem was finished. A few appeared with an immediacy </p><p>that surprised me. Other times, I worked off and on </p><p>throughout the day, giving them up to the internet late at </p><p>night, but seldom before I was satisfied. This went against </p><p>the grain of my personal writing process, as I prefer to edit </p><p>only after days or weeks have passed, letting the poems cool </p><p>for the critical cold eye. Self-publication scared me, sort of </p><p>like the time in junior high school, when I accidentally </p><p>kicked off my penny loafer into the middle of the basketball </p><p>court during a game. Ninth graders dribbled around my </p><p>sad shoe like they might a mouse from the biology lab. </p><p>The true embarrassment was that I'd forgotten to change </p><p>my socks after gym class, and so there I was, swinging my </p><p>dumb foot from the balcony in a sweat-stained sock. </p><p>Essentially, my social life was ruined, and I became a poet.</p><p><br></p><p>I'd like to thank Facebook readers who followed my posts, </p><p>especially those who commented on what they read. Their </p><p>words and emojis, likes and loves, let me feel like a village </p><p>poet, sitting around a smoky fire, probably Irish, weaving </p><p>words, inventing stories. </p><p><br></p><p>I kept the organic character of original diction in place. The </p><p>use of quarantine instead of stay-at-home or sheltering-in-</p><p>place is an example of learning terminology, new words for </p><p>a new time. The inaccuracies are honest. These poems are </p><p>not all about Covid-19, per se, but all of them, for better or </p><p>worse, were discovered while swimming in shelter, crawling </p><p>for calm water.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
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