Today was the official launch event for my new poetry collection W/Make (Bottlecap Press), held at Half Price Books in Richardson, Texas.

It was great seeing new and old friends alike, all come to enjoy in the sharing of poetry and discussion. My book W/Make focuses on the topics of creating and making, the mystery and magic of how it’s done, and the life of those who do it. Twice I referenced Jane Hirshfield, and her powerful book Nine Gates, as I so often do. My poem “the line abused,” first published in the Rio Grande Review, owes its lineage to her chapter on the use of the lion in poetic tradition. I also referenced one of my favorite fiction writers, Franz Kafka, as two of the poems in the collection make a subtle nod to one of his famous lines from a letter to friend, in which he wrote, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

After my reading, we all had a great discussion around literature in translation and the breadth of vocabulary available in various languages. Many don’t realize that English has access to an enormous vocabulary, as it borrows extensively outside of of its Anglo-Saxon roots, from languages such as Latin, French and German. But an important note that Tamil and Korean are thought to outrank English in number of words.

Thanks again to Half Price Books in Richardson for hosting this event.