Manuscript

I've been expanding the manuscript of Lovesick the past two days. My publisher, Press Americana, gave me the go-ahead to add new material, some of it recently published and some of it accepted but not yet in print or online. Press Americana told me that their only hesitation in accepting the manuscript was that so many of the poems -- virtually all of them -- had been previously published. I don't see why it was even an issue. For one thing, the poems were generally published in journals so small that it's a joke (and not a very funny one) to think of the poems as having been dangerously overexposed. For another, doesn't the fact that the poems were previously published speak to their quality? Rightly or wrongly, it does to me. If publication isn't a test or confirmation of quality, then what is? Reviews? Well, the poems have to be published to be reviewed.

The manuscript ran slightly less than 100 pages as originally submitted; it now runs 145 pages.