GOOD HOUSEKEEPING Launches!
After years of writing and months of preparation, it all happens at once
For the past few months, I’ve shared in-depth stories about some of the poems in my new book. Here, at last, is the entire volume, out now from my good friends at Poets Wear Prada. If you haven’t gotten your copy, yet, here is an order link.
Here is publisher Roxanne Hoffman handing over to me my first copies after months of planning and prepration, on the page and off. A key part of this was Roxanne’s business partner, Jack Cooper, who keeps an eye on things from Paris.
We put together a little tour, and here are current and upcoming dates. The next one is the Rainbow Book Fair, April 20 at the Center in Manhattan as shown below. I’ll be reading from noon to 1pm and hanging around after that. Please stop by wherever you can. More dates are coming in July and July.
We also reached out for reviews, and it’s great to share responses like these. Thanks so much to the hardworking editors and reviewers who serve publishers and writers in this way.
“…this collection is a little gem about nurturing joy in gay domestic life, with all its attendant challenges.” Amanda Holmes Duffy in Washington Independent Review of Books
Whitacre’s Good Housekeeping is a piercing gaze into the locus of human life, the home—or “this cave, this tree, // this realm where loved ones circle and unwind.” Whitacre takes on timeless themes and in a contemporary context, touching on consumerism, war, and the climate crisis, while also entering an intimate space where mundane domestic scenes connect to what makes us most human: love, memory, and grief. BookLife (Editors Pick)
“The ‘message’ in these urgently tangible sensations – touch, sound, sight, smell – is conveyed in the titles of several of Whitacre’s concluding poems, “At the End of the Day,” Just Be,” and “Remember to Live.” It’s the same insistence Mary Oliver memorably emphasizes when she writes about this “one wild and precious life” that we live.” —Charles Rammeklamp in Compulsive Reader
“Good Housekeeping an exceptional recommendation for contemporary poetry book club discussion groups interested in free verse that captures the outer limits of social decorum and artificial and real constructs of what makes life worth living.Good Housekeeping pulls no punches in either its subjects or delivery, traversing the pinnacles and apexes of mainstream and alternative homes and thinking with equal dexterity and force.” —Diane Donovan in Midwest Book Review and Donovan’s Literary Services
“Good Housekeeping explores domestic bliss with an eye for detail and conversations about what is really important. He explores free verse and narrative voice in a variety of long and short poems… Whitacre is skilled in relating common household chores to the bigger picture of life by using what people do universally. He is skilled in relating everyday life to natural happenings.” —Lynette G. Esposito, North of Oxford.
I’ll share more as the process continues. If you have any thoughts on the poems, the process, or if you’d like me to come your way to read work and share more, please let me know.
I would be grateful if you could review Good Housekeeping on Amazon and/or Goodreads.
Stay tuned in the next edition to find out how I’m using National Poetry Month to recharge the writing thing.
Thanks for joining the jouney!