<h2>Online Titles from Kraken Press</h2>

To perspiring poets

Dear poet,

Thanks for writing. I'm sorry I don't have time to critique your work. But I'm grateful to you for looking at my site, and if it got you thinking about writing yourself, that's great. Writing poems is a wonderful way to learn to think and feel on paper.

Not a day goes by that I don't get a submission or a query by email. It is an easy thing to send a letter to 50 'zines and hope some publisher out there is experiencing a verse shortage.

But there is never a verse shortage. The problem with poetry is that there are 20 writers of it for every reader of it. The reason is that there are quality standards for readers, and none for writers. May this not mean you.

Many poets ask me, "How can I get published?" Well, if I knew that, I wouldn't be self-publishing on my website. But here are some ideas.

Swap poems with other poets. Show them to thoughtful friends. Make your own e-mail 'zine and send new work to people who'll put up with you. Put up a web site and stop passing traffic. Or send poems to Usenet and WWW sites, like rec.arts.poetry and http://www.pclink.com/naniset/poetry/index.htm

Do these things and you'll enjoy 49% of the joy poetry can provide. (The other 49% of fun is in the writing.)

A poetry press can give you nothing you can't give yourself. During a different, more economical era, I published in hundreds of places, and let me tell you, it's like throwing the family dog down a well. A yowl and a splash and it's over. The thing you loved is gone and you really never hear about it again.

I don't want to tell you what to do. The way I went, self-publishing, isn't perfect. But it bought me time. I made myself write. And along the way I met and made a few friends, some of whom stayed with me for the duration. And doggone it, I believe writing poetry gives my other writing a particular flavor.

My best advice, my friend, is to attend to the inner voice, and treat people willing to listen to you well. The rest, I'm sorry to say, is mostly crap.

Very best wishes, Mike Finley

To salve Mike Finley's tortured psyche ... click here ... ahh ...

About Kraken Press

I started Kraken Press in 1977 to be a "publisher of last resort" -- a place writers could turn to if all else failed. I helped a number of troubled projects by other writers find the light of day. Years later I am resurrecting the imprint as a way to keep my own work in print. Sad, innit? My goal is just to keep these items alive in a few readers' heads.

"AT LONG LAST, LOVE!"

Online Titles from Kraken Press

We are out of the professional part of the website now. (For info on professional books, go to the business bookstore.) What follows is news from my hobby press, named for the kraken, a mythological creature no two accounts decribe the same, or even similar. Was it half alligator and half lion, or half serpent and half codfish? Your guess is as good as anyone's.

About Kraken Press

I started Kraken Press in 1979 to be a "publisher of last resort" -- a place artists could turn to if all else failed. I helped a lot of troubled projects by other writers find the light of day. Years later I am resurrecting the imprint as a way to keep my own work in print. Sad, innit? My goal is just to keep these items alive in a few reader's heads.

A Message to Poets

Before you submit to Kraken Press, read this message.

Essays

I Dreamed I Was the 13th Beatle ... and I meet George, years later ...

In The Year of the Deer Christ Winter in the country

Casi, You Will Always Be My Girl Story of a good dog

Guatemaltecan Prayers It was real hot on the bus ...

The Good King A sad Christmas story

The Ice Father An even sadder Valentine's Day story

The Jacob's Hill Recommunion I attend a 10-year reunion at a commune in the Colorado Rockies

A Melting Pot a fever dream of family -- everything is swirly

A Prophecy Thirty-six years later I still cry several times a year.

A Jar in Tennessee In the woods with a dog and a tape recorder

Two Cities Eating an apple on the banks of the Mississippi

The Woman I Love Sometimes, when we say no, we mean yes.

Death, God, and Santa Claus Snowflakes and death ...

Couvade and the Cloud of Unknowing An inquiry into what it is to be a father

The Things I Meant to Say Before the children got away ...

Saturday Morning Omens by the airport

Stories

The Canonical History of the Tooth Fairy Things you did not know you knew

Why the Hippo Calls Canada Home Read and believe

Silverball Story of a real hero

The Three Mosquitoes The universally loved story of the three mosquitoes

A Frankenstein Christmas Santa needs help again

The Man in the Warehouse Window The fiction of transubstantiation

Poems

The New Yorker Holiday poems -- a Minnesotan in Manhattan.
The Old Saw Everyone loves that Old Saw ...
Thalidomide Dreams Poems for my old school friend Peter Meister
Virtual Marble Poems for a sculptor I met in Redstone, Colorado.
Old Stone , that son of a gun, is taken to his place of eternal reward.
When You Are Pope It ain't all it's cracked up to be ...
The Lord God Has Words with the Choir Kill the poets!
University Avenue and Other Poems ... A love poem to my self.
Inexpensive Coffee Table Book ... For my brother Patrick
The Things that Had Its Way with Duluth ... From a reading I did for Poetry Harbor.
Return of the Thing that Had Its Way with Duluth ... Followup to #1
Four Jewels (Kraken, 1989). A Christmas book for my family.
Lucky You (Litmus, Inc., 1976). My dear friend Charles Potts published my first book. It is ourtageously egomaniacal and self-pitying, but I still have some affection for the lad. Lots of blood curdling language, and imagery you wouldn't share with your grandmama. I love "Letter from Como" to this day. It is nonsense but it is hot nonsense.
The Movie under the Blindfold (Vanilla Press, 1978). This book should never have been published, though it is a very interesting book. I submitted it to VP at a time when they were a conventional press. It was accepted by its panel of editors, but its publisher was going through a lot of feminist reorientation, and she bridled at the idea of publishing yet another chapbook of patriarchal verse. Aw come on, I said, just one more? It was never distributed. She was so embarrassed by me that she had the books boxed up in her garage. It rained, and that was the end of that.
Home Trees (Minnesota Writers Publishing House, 1978) This was a pleasant book, and you could see I was getting a little wiser. Check out "This Gun Shoots Black Holes." Of all black hole poems, I am told, this is the one least informed about astrophysics.
Borrowing from Minneapolis (To Pay St. Paul); I intended this as a dialogue about city/country life, writtne when I worked as news editor of the Woprthington Daily Globe, 1978-80. When I couldn't interest a press in this topic, I kind of gave up on finding publishers for my poems.
The Whole While My last psychedelic work.
Water Hills (Salthouse Press, 1985) My friend De Clinton published this as a favor to me when I lived in Milwaukee. It chronicles some of my experiences as a young father. I wrote this while I was part of a study on couvade -- the problems experienced by expectant fathers. Later, I wrote a nonfiction book about couvade called THE PREGNANT MAN. This book was never published, either -- New York houses shrewdly deduced that people in denial (the main problem of expectant fathers) do not buy books about it.
The Brood; I wrote this as a Xmas present to my family members. Something special for each of them. Includes the title poem, which marks a new zenith in self-pity, I am told.
Great Blue, some very emotional poems from around 1991. My stepdad died, and other bad stuff.
Remains. A long poem about finding my second book remaindered. It is a hoot.
The Beagles of Arkansas. Everything there wants to leave.
Sunset Lake Poems. Two lovely summer weeks, sitting by the sand and typing on my laptop. Ah, nature, how I treasure your digitized reminiscences.
The House of Murk. Some really weird stuff. The word murk is essential to a proper appreciation.
Roads A trip to the Juan de Fuca Straits.
Something about the Buddha Real short items.
Looking for China Selected Poems. Contains my greatest hits, "The Clarinet Is a Difficult Instrument" and "Browsers." Those two have been exposed to print more often than Madonna.

The Unnatural (baseball writings), Kraken Press

A New Philosophy

As of February 1996, I'm going to present material here in a different way. Readers who want to read a book of poems or essays can simply click on the textfile. Books are published by my own Kraken Press unless otherwise indicated.

People ask me why I spent a lifetime writing this stuff. It hasn't made me famous, and it hasn't brought me much revenue. And I suspect it confuses some of my regular clients, who must wonder which I prefer, their assignments or the work I assign myself.

I used to have a lot of high faluting answers for that, about the Imagination and Semiotics and Stuff. Nowadays I see it as a hobby, like fishing. It helps me pass the time in a soothing and sometimes exciting way. I try to have fun and have an audience "in mind" even if I don't have one in reality. If you are out there and enjoy something, please drop me a line. It is a nice feeling to hear you have "gotten through."