Release Week Final Day

There are more interviews and reviews yet to come, that's for sure, but I'm happy to end release week with this illustration, by Edward Mullany himself, that goes behind the scenes of the making of If I Falter at the Gallows.

[Also enjoy release week Day 6.5, Day 6, Day 5, Day 4, Day 3, Day 2, Day 1 posts, where you can learn more reviews, interviews and stuff about the book.]

Release Week Day 6

Happy Saturday. Check out the illustration that John Dermot Woods drew. It's based on the title poem of If I Falter at the Gallows. Here's a cross-section:

You can pick up a copy of the book for $12, with no shipping costs, here.

[Also enjoy release week Day 5, Day 4, Day 3, Day 2, Day 1 posts, where you can learn more reviews, interviews and stuff about the book. We're celebrating the book all week, with more tomorrow and Monday.]

Release Week Day 5

TGIF dude, release week is wearing me out.

Today to celebrate the release of Edward Mullany's amazing collection, If I Falter at the Gallows, there is an interview with the author at NANO Fiction. In the fascinating and profound Q&A, I'm most struck by this nugget:

I don’t aim to write funny poems, but neither do I aim to write sad poems. I try to describe reality through the voices of people so stunned by their experience of reality that they see with a kind of insane clarity.

That seems to be what many of the reviews of the book are responding to.

Today, why don't you pick up a copy of the book from our distributor, SPD?

And also, since it's Friday, what's say you take a minute to relax and check out Edward's paintings on display at his Tumblr site, The Other Notebook.

[Don't forget to tune in through Monday for more. Also enjoy release week Day 4, Day 3, Day 2, Day 1 posts, where you can learn more about the book and its author.]

Release Week Day 4

As release week continues, I'm delighted by how many poems are being excerpted in the reviews people are writing. Samples abound, and I kind of hope the whole book gets reproduced this way so that 10 years from now, enterprising college students won't have to buy the book from the school bookstore, but will be able to Google the poems and put the whole book together. I remember doing this for T.S. Eliot and Elizabeth Bishop.

So to help with that cause, here's another poem from the book -- one of my all time favorites, which was originally published in isReads (you can see photos of it there):

Silence in the Milky Way

A man
knits

while a woman
who likes to knit

gardens.

To me, much happens in those eleven words that can't be accounted for.

Mel Bosworth, in his review of the book at Outsider Writers Collective, notes the same effect, writing, "They’re filled, each of them, with an odd, grinning infinity, and with the booming magnificence of change."

He also says, "This book has fast become a favorite of mine because it isn’t simply for poets or fiction writers or mothers or shaggy sons . . ."

[Also enjoy release week Day 3, Day 2, Day 1 posts, where you can learn more about the book and its author.]

Release Week Day 3

Today in If I Falter at the Gallows news, there are a couple great posts about the book around the Internet.

• First, check out Christopher Newgent's review at Vouched, which went up yesterday. It's a meditative consideration of the book that makes Christopher want to follow it with a reading of Ecclesiastes (but he's hampered by his cat.
• The review at Vouched compares If I Falter at the Gallows to Joseph Young's Easter Rabbit, so it's cool to have Joe's thoughts on the book over at his (long active and currently graphic-arts-loaded) blog, Very Small Dogs. "... the poems are too strong," he writes. "What loveliness."

You can add the book at Goodreads, and I hope you will.

[This is Day 3 of Release Week. Day 2 and Day 1 roundups can be read here.]

If I Falter at the Gallows OFFICIALLY RELEASED

Huzzah -- the day has come.

Edward Mullany's book, If I Falter at the Gallows, is official. It is officially a book of poems that exists.

In keeping with release week, here are some related links to mark the occasion:

• At Monkeybicycle, the excellent J.A. Tyler interviews Edward about the poems. There are lots of excerpts and insights. They talk about An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
• And here's a cool piece Edward wrote at The Laughing Yeti about reading. 
• And at the PGP YouTube page, you can watch the book trailer that Edward made.

We'll have more links and other celebratory stuff all week. I hope you come along for the ride (and check out the spooky website for the book, where if you already have a copy, you can comment all about it).

It's Release Week!

October 25 is the official release date for Edward Mullany's amazing collection of poems, If I Falter at the Gallows. All week long we're going to be doing a roundup of the things people are saying about the book. You can follow that here or at the book's microsite, www.falteratthegallows.com.

Here are some things to know from the getgo:

• The book is 83 pages long
• The poems are generally short
• There's a 2-page press kit that has an interview in it
• At The Open End there is an early review
• Graham Foust said the poems are "'seeing things'," as in, they're a little unhinged
• Edward Mullany is an editor at Matchbook
• The Goodreads page is here
• The book trailer is here
• Edward Mullany has a Tumblr site

Throughout Release Week, you'll be able to buy If I Falter at the Gallows for $12, shipping included. If you've read the book and written about it somewhere, let us know over at the microsite. We'd love to link it up.