The importance of covers

I have been going back and forth with Knopf for at least three weeks trying to get them to use a powerful graphic for the cover of my new poetry collection MADE IN DETROIT. I pay a lot of attention to the covers of my poetry books – I would on the other books, fiction, nonfiction, but publishers always insist they know best athough over the years some of the covers they insisted on were really drab and dreary or inappropriate, like the cover on the paperback of HE, SHE AND IT that makes it look like a sleazy romance novel. The original cover of STONE, PAPER, KNIFE was so dull that I would watch browsers go down the row of books after a reading and not one would pick up that collection because of its bleached looking grey cover of hands. Ever since then, I have been intimately involved with choosing graphics for my poetry books. Woody found a graphic of a tree growing out of a ruined library that I fell in love with. I had such a visceral reaction to it that I wrote a poem inspired by it. My editor Ann Close liked it also, but we will see if the art and design department at Knopf will agree. The images they’ve picked out for this book I’ve hated. Not only after readings, but even more in bookstores, a handsome cover attracts and a dull cover does not. We went into Boston yesterday to Beth Israel for a check on my operated knee and the previously operated knee, I was told that because the right knee had to be done before the left knee had healed, it is causing problems. The ligaments in the originally operated knee get strained because I use it as the dominant knee to protect the more recently operated knee. It all means more pain. I must be far more careful than I have been == and NOT overdoing, habitual for me. Today a friend is throwing a party. After renting for decades and having to move frequently after a search yet again for a year round rental she could afford, she found a small house – fine for her—that is very near to other friends. It’s next door but set back in a hollow. You can’t even see it from their house, but it’s a quick walk. she is celebrating having a home finally of her own, and we are eager to celebrate with her. Pattypans once more tomorrow night and then we are essentially done with summer vegetables. We are getting a few cukes from the second planting. Time for Swiss Chard, all our salad greens, Brussels sprouts, kale, leeks, Chinese cabbage, red cabbage, radishes. The peppers are still producing. I dried some if the cayennes and am freezing others. I froze two big bags of Bell peppers for stuffed. Wednesday night we celebrated Rosh Hashana with friends, eight of us at table. It began with apples & good local honey Melenie had given us. Then gravlax. WE roasted a chicken and I made in & out stuffing. Woody made his famous noodle kugel. I change the ritual a little every year, putting in poems, taking out poems, tweaking the prose parts checking the transliteration of the Hebrew. We had two desserts, honeycake and taiglach guests had made. It was a wonderful evening, although we were both exhausted afterward. It’s jhard for me to sit at able a long time. My knees first ache and then hurt a lot.