Curve Blocks View: A Book of Poetry

"Curve Blocks View" is a collection of 60 poems written by me, Gabriel Cleveland, over the past two years and recently organized and revised with the intention of attaining publication in book form.  The book heavily features imagery and reflections of travel, driving, and work in the sometimes-desolate, sometimes-hopeful mindscape of 21st century independence and co-existence.  My goal is to create poetry that is concise, understandable, and relatable to as close to all readers as possible, as I believe whole-heartedly in poetry as the purest vessel of written emotional expression.  While many people scoff at the genre as needlessly obscure, flowery, or downright unnecessary, I see it as the creative version of mathematics: just as our understanding of physics, architecture and technology are all built with the invisible blocks of math, the best music, books, movies, and hell, even twitter posts are grounded by a firm poetic sensibility.  While some people say Poetry is Dead (this 2003 article is a reaction to that mindset and argues for its revival), I believe it has more viability than ever before in an era that is increasingly focused on quick communication, economy of words, and expression of self.  If we can put away the pre-conceived, middle-school developed notions of the genre as dusty, unrelatable, and irrelevant, it could undergo a metamorphosis of clarity and social importance, and I am looking to publish my first book as part of this contemporary canon I invision.

Four Way Books, which has previously published work by Meg Kearney  (Pine Manor College's Solstice MFA Program Director) and Jeffrey Harrison (author of my favorite book of poetry, Incomplete Knowledge), is currently holding open submissions of book-length manuscripts, and my goal is to finalize the revision of the last 40 poems between now and the submission deadline, July 1st, 12:00AM PST.  These days, most publishers, including Four Way Books, require submission fees to cover the costs of reviewing, editing, and producing hard copies of contemporary literature.  While it is vital that these publishers stay afloat, it makes it harder for writers like me with a few metric tons of student debt to submit with any frequency and get our words considered, let alone published.  It is for this reason that I have created this page.  My goal is modest: if everyone who visits this page or my writer page  on Facebook gives a dollar, it will allow me the security of knowing that I can afford to try to get my words out without running aground financially.  On top of that, publishers like seeing that their potential authors have people dedicated enough to vouch for them, which in turn means more potential customers.

In short, please help me get closer to my dream of being published and doing my part to make contemporary poetry accessible by giving just a dollar and spreading the word.  Thank you for your time.  Here's a poem from the collection:

Hidden Source Material
"Every hair is numbered, like every grain of sand."
~Bob Dylan

When you’re tapped out and wordless,
take a deep breath, feel the air
shift your lungs from empty to safe.
Remember: when you blink, the world goes dark
for one frame. Consider the metaphors
carried by those milliseconds: telephone lines
clicked off, disconnected people lost in the sun-
less day. Pay attention! Smoldering blood
traces veins against your skin.
Put your ear to it - in your heartbeat is every song
you forgot you loved. If your hair stands on end,
good, put your skin to your tongue
and taste the goose bumps. No one else can
tell you what that's like; grab your pen and write.