Thank you!

Hello there! Some of you I recognize, and others I don't. What I mean is: you follow my blog, read the posts, and continue--even as some of my posts are kinda ordinary.

What I mean is: I want to thank you!

In about a month, my [first] chapbook will be out, The Sum of Two Mothers. You've read my thanks in my posting, read about the cover art, and, now, Ariana of ELJ Publications has said the release date is moved up to December 1--if not sooner!

I'm waiting for my amazing artist-friend to finish her work, then hand it over to Leah to design the cover.

Yesterday, I signed the contract.

So, I am excited, for sure.

If you've read this far, please do me a favor. Will you private message me on facebook your address? I want to send you a copy when it comes out.

Of course, also please identify yourself as a follower of my blog, and your follower-name.

Note: the offer above has expired.

I just want to thank you again!
Dennis

Here are some blurbs for the chapbook:

Sometimes the most complicated stories of our lives can be put into the shortest of forms. In this small book of poems Dennis Etzel Jr. recounts a fragmented chronology from his childhood to his fatherhood. Living their lives with love and integrity, Etzel's two mothers raised him together despite the status quo resistance they daily faced in Topeka, KS. Now the father of sons, Etzel's poems draw as much from his own memories as they do from the larger social context of marriage equality — and in bridging that gap between the personal and the political with lyrical grace and political conviction, Sum of Two Mothers is a riveting little book that is as much about growing up with two mothers, as it is about becoming a father who is raising his sons with a more inclusive — but equally protected — model of the world.  

—Kristin Prevallet, I Afterlife, Essay in Mourning Time

I love this book, and I wanted to say that first, “in danger / of being / engendered”.  These are the beautiful and percipient poems Minnie Bruce Pratt’s son could have written if the cops hadn’t ripped him from the arms of his two mothers.  Crime Against Nature, meet The Sum of Two Mothers, it’s time we all meet up over here where Dennis Etzel Jr. is making the magic happen for us!  You will hear in him with me the voice of a poet we have been waiting to hear, and glad we finally found him!

—CA Conrad, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics

Rarely does a poem do as much in as few words as Dennis Etzel Jr.’s Sum of Two Mothers. It is a complete mini-autobiography in verse — but one that leaves ample room for the reader’s imagination. The poem’s supple, continuous syntax, plain-spoken musicality, architectural lines, and ample white space deftly convey both what is said and experienced, as well as what is not said or talked about. Reading Dennis Etzel, Jr.’s work is like reading William Carlos Williams, if Williams had had Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas as mothers.

—Joseph Harrington, Things Come On: An Amneoir

Dennis Etzel Jr’s The Sum of Two Mothers wades open-wounded into the unfriendly waters of a society bent on strangle-holding natural love and motherhood into pat definitions: “she was a mother before I thought of her / as my ‘other mother,’ // or ‘another mother’ because ‘mother’ / for me is hard to define.” In tones questioning, unsure, and ultimately defiant, these poems gather together in representation of the complexity of familial love. The Sum of Two Mothers is an imperative story, and one that is cast in lines intuitive, melodic, and resonant.

—Leah Sewell, Birth in Storm