…but it’s been a productive minute!

After the emotional high of the Louisville Book Festival last year, where I got to meet my friend and fellow poet Kristina Hamlett in person, I definitely fell off the earth for a little bit. But, allow me to explain myself.

So, “Dehiscence” was as an absolute flop.

After several months of checking my email and googling about the Book Leaf Publishing company, I realized I fell for a vanity publishing scam. I submitted my collection to the “Write Angle 21 Day Challenge” in September, and it wasn’t “published” until march. I say “published” with quotation marks because it looked absolutely dreadful. Since I didn’t purchase their covers, the cover I submitted was potato quality and the book itself just felt lacking. They also didn’t provide me with a link to get copies of my book, just an Amazon link where I could purchase copies of my own book individually. I’ll provide that link below in case you’re curious.

I was completely disheartened by the whole thing. I stopped reaching out to some of the friends I had made from the Louisville Book Festival because I was ashamed for even promoting this travesty of a book on the business cards I handed out to so many people. My first book, “That’s Fair”, I am fiercely proud of because I put so much of myself into it. I worked extremely hard to arrange the poems with doodles and emotional honest. “Dehiscence” just felt empty- no illustrations, no thought given to the order, and an extremely disappointing cover.

I gave “That’s Fair” a sense of closure, but left “Dehiscence” as an open wound. In some ways, that’s almost fitting. Almost.

After pretending it doesn’t exist for a few months, I decided to revisit the collection. I submitted it to a contest hosted by the Self Publishing Review. What they responded with actually made me feel a lot better about the collection:

READER NOTES
Book Title: Dehiscence

MARK OUT OF 5 – TOTAL – 17

Premise/Story – 3.5
Writing Talent – 4
Quality of Editing – 4
Design and Presentation – 2.5
Commercial Appeal – 3

RELATIVE TO OTHER BOOKS ENTERED TO THE CONTEST, WHERE DID THIS BOOK SCORE?

A. Top 10%
B. Higher 25%
C. Middle 40%
D. Low 20%
E. Disqualified 5% – State why.

GENERAL COMMENTS:

A personal and eclectic mix of poetry, recollections and self-examinations, Dehiscence is raw mental processing on the page, delving into topics both universal and deeply personal.
Some pieces are casually framed, as though the writer is simply writing for herself, getting out thoughts in a pleasant pattern, such as in “There was Fire In Your Eyes.” Yet even in the most straightforward pieces, Decker-Benjamin manages to plant questions that sprout and flower and re-seed.

These are snapshots poems of life and recollection, varying in form and subject matter, but always reverberating with a deep honesty, as though these are poems ripped sincerely from the mind and left unedited upon the page. Given that these poems were written in a span of only three weeks,
there may have been some poring over and reworking, but achieving even the sense of fluid free verse is impressive.
“Spiraling” is one of the strongest pieces in the collection—bold and aggressive and uncompromising in its emotions and existential confusion. The final poem is also notably powerful and a perfectly placed capstone, summing up so many of the other themes and thoughts that pepper the collection. As a whole, the book is well-curated and ordered, without any unnecessarily redundant poems or filler.
The longer poems give the poet a chance to flex her muscles, but some of the shorter ones, despite attempting to be concise and impactful, can leave the reader wanting more (“Queen City Scream”).
The cover is a bit flat and generic, and doesn’t grab the attention, while the title is somewhat obscure, which could challenge the collection’s overall success.
That said, engaging in both its cadence and vulnerability, as well as relatable themes that are both troubling and cathartic, this is a quick and unassuming collection that hits hard and stays with you.

WOW. In a book that I was so desperate to forget existed, it placed mid in a contest. If you want honest and thoughtful feedback of your writing, the Self Publishing Review is the way to go. The response reinvigorated my desire to do it- publish another collection of poems.

And I’m going to do it, and I’ll tell you all about it as I do.