I created and designed a poetry chapbook of original works titled The Remnants and the Few that is not yet published, but this is part of the introduction to the book. Hopefully it will give you some idea of what the collection will look like.
The Remnants and the Few Introduction
This poetry collection, The Remnants and the Few, concerns itself with beginnings and endings. The order in which the poems have been placed reflects this arc, with the collection starting out with images of beginnings, like the planting of a seed or meeting someone for the first time. The idea here was also to have a progression of where we are at in the process of growing. For example, we begin with the seed, which has not grown at all yet. And then we move into a storm cloud, which has begun its journey of growth, and is well on its way to its peak. We then move to the middle part, with one poem holding that space. In said poem, we look at the idea of the automaton and the stasis of that middle part. This scarce representation of being in between life and death reflects the idea that reaching that point is not the point of all of this. The movement in life is in the growing and the decaying. Actually being in the middle space is a blank space, a stopping point before the next leg of the journey. This brings us to the second half of the collection, which deals with endings. All things come to an end, and this is a space in which to reflect on that. Many poems in this section deal with remembrance as a form of movement. While the moment or the lifetime has ended, we can continue to get forward movement out of it by looking back. Overall, the theme of this poetry collection is that of the remnants and that of the few.
The title The Remnants and the Few is interesting to me, because it focuses more on the endings, but by being the title, it is the beginning of the collection. This juxtaposition adds to the contrasts in the collection, furthered when you take into account that the “remnants” (referring to the little that’s left) and the “few” (referring to the little we have to begin with) are flipped from the order you would expect them to appear. The idea of the “remnants” and the “few” is to highlight small beginnings and small endings. Things come into being by something as humble as a seed that then grows into something beautiful. But in the end, it fades and becomes nothing but a memory, something so unimpressive and inconspicuous that it doesn’t even materialize outside the theater of the mind.
The cover art of the collection, done by the talented Nichole Sherry, reflects this narrative as well. Both the front and back covers each feature a rose, a universal symbol of beauty. The front cover is a growing, blooming rose. It is bright and full of life, highlighting the title of the chapbook. On the back is a dying rose. This rose is dark and faded, losing its petals. The front cover leads into the first section of the collection; the back cover concludes the second half. This contrast between the two, and even within each half itself, once again ties back into this idea of the beginning and the end. But by using a rose, I am highlighting that there is beauty in growing into something full of life as well as in something that is fading into a memory. Petals and thorns, two parts of the rose joined by the stem as life and death are joined in one book by the spine. If the chapbook is opened so that the front and back covers can be seen side by side, you will see that they bend away from each other, yet another physical reference to the theme of the collection.
The aesthetic of this collection cannot be easily placed. The poems touch on such different subjects that it is hard to pin beyond a theme. But with each poem, I tried to incorporate a sense of beauty as well as wit. In my writing, I find that I am happiest when I am able to mingle the soft, perceptive side of myself with my fiercely stubborn and passionate and individualistic side. And I think that I was able to do that here. Even with such variety, all are lyric poems, and I believe that that common thread of emotional human experience ties them all together with a deeper thread of what it is that I am trying to convey through this collection of poetry....
Be on the lookout for my poetry collection in print!