If I were 26 years old, full of urine and vinegar, and had a first poetry collection, I would consider myself a modern troublemaker. I’ll be out of my car, which will probably be a beat-up Volvo station wagon with a COEXIST bumper sticker on the rear windshield. I would push my poems to both suspicious and skeptical audiences, traveling from city to city, taking stages at whatever coffee shops I could find. I would enthrall the crowd, numbering from two to twenty-two, with my full-throated performance, embodying the emotional arc of my poems. My audience will be laughing one moment, and then with the chemical dark arts of my verbal prowess, they will be plunging into sadness and despair with breakneck speed. They couldn’t help but burst into tears at the depths we descended into together.
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However, as it is, I am 46 and married and have two children. If I’m full of urine, it’s probably a prostate problem, and if I’m full of vinegar, it’s probably apple cider vinegar for muscle cramps or acid reflux.
When I first heard the phrase “geriatric pregnancy” a few years ago, I imagined white-haired women of grandmother’s age, suffering from osteo-arthritis with hunched forward shoulders, bowed legs and pregnant bellies. But no, it’s a real phrase in the medical world, apparently used by obstetricians to describe the emotional harm it causes to pregnant people over the age of 35. Partly as a way of mocking that unfortunate phrase and partly as a playful tribute to those against whom it has been used, I have started calling my poetry collections, sacred body, My “veteran debut.” This phrase has helped me enjoy the joy I feel upon publishing my book, while reducing that nagging feeling that this is something I Needed I have already accomplished that in my life.
While I wrote poems in high school and college, I didn’t start taking poetry seriously until I was working on a Master of Divinity degree in seminary. My first creative writing professor for poetry was the myth-storyteller himself, Pulitzer Prize winner, Yusef Komunyakaa, who taught at Princeton University when I was at Princeton Theological Seminary. I didn’t deserve such a professor, and he didn’t deserve to read the poems I read. The first time I met Professor Komunyakaa during office hours, I foisted 12 poems on him. We sat in his office for two and a half hours, reading slowly and considering each line of each poem. Sometimes, he tried not to make faces. I had never had my poems criticized before. Even though he was kind, he was undoubtedly careful, which made me feel as if I was losing my courage. Holding my insides in my hands, I looked at her and asked, “Is there any hope?” “There’s always hope,” he replied with a smile. On our second meeting, just two weeks after the first, I brought him a stash of 10 poems I had just written. Looking at this trove of new work, Professor Komunyakaa slyly and obliquely said to me, “Oh my God, you are prolific.” I immediately realized that this was not a compliment.
When I was in my late twenties, I spent several years completing a PhD in contemporary poetry and creative writing at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and working under the guidance of Don Patterson and Kathleen Jamie, two more notable poets who were not worthy of my early work. However, they read them, as Don would often remind me jokingly, because they were “contractually obligated” to do so. You would think, being smarter than I should have been, I would have made a strategy to publish the poems and work toward a collection. Your impression of my abilities, while kind, would be very wrong.
In those years and into my early thirties, my strategy for publication was to submit a few poems the new Yorker And paris review. If they haven’t accepted any packets, which they have yet to do (although hope springs eternal), I would wait another year or two before sending them more. This did not prove to be a solid strategy for achieving literary stardom. I realized, albeit late, that there were serious flaws in my approach.
Did I need perseverance, or luck? Or perhaps I should try to win over the editor of a large poetry press and blackmail them into publishing my collection? Surely this isn’t the easiest way for a book to be published?
Finally, about ten or eleven years ago, I started looking for publication for individual poems and collections. At that time my manuscript was called lonely gospelWas selected as one of four finalists for a contest, one of the first places I sent it to. “This sounds easy,” I thought. That was in 2016. When my manuscript was not selected as the winner, I realized that getting a collection published can take longer than I expected. And oh my God, did it ever happen?
With individual poems, I settled on a strategy of aiming for a higher number of rejections rather than acceptances each year, because in this literary game you can almost guarantee rejection. Over a few years, I faced 85-90 rejections and felt accomplished at my level of failure.
Rejection became a way of life for my poetry. “Sightings,” one of my favorite poems ever written, was rejected over 120 times by various publications before it climbed out of the slush pile and got published. Sun magazine. A stroke of luck in different poems helped me send the collection more often.
One competition after another. Semi-finalist for this, finalist for that. These moves are common in the world of American poetry. Variations in the collection were finalists for four different awards and semi-finalists almost as many times. Over the years I had become a little pessimistic about my manuscript’s chances of becoming a published collection. Did I need perseverance, or luck? Or perhaps I should try to win over the editor of a large poetry press and blackmail them into publishing my collection? Surely this isn’t the easiest way for a book to be published?
Then, in 2024, I got an email that changed everything. Texas Review Press was interested in publishing my collection, and I didn’t even have to blackmail anyone. They just liked my work and wanted to publish it. Crazy idea! I was very happy. I bought a nice bottle of scotch to celebrate (Lagavulin 16, if I can get the Nick Offerman-style branding deal). My wife breathed a sigh of relief that there was now one less thing I couldn’t stand firm about. Then, of course, I had other things to hold on to, like every single line of my book contract, certain that somewhere in the process someone was trying to cheat me out of all the money that would surely come to me once my collection was published. My editor laughed when I raised concerns about the film rights in my contract.
Between signing the contract in 2024 and releasing my book in March 2026, I read about marketing, how to hustle myself on social media to move copies of the book. I planned launch parties – one in the Carolinas, one in Nashville, where I live now. I wrote other books, begged publications to review the collection (some did, and the reviews have been wonderful so far), worried about promoting the book without any real budget, and really enjoyed the steps of getting the collection out into the world. Overall, the book release has been an exhausting and lovely gift of an experience.
However, what about my age? Maybe I’m not as old as I sometimes feel, but as I look at so many young poets making their debut, and I see gray in my hair and gray in my beard, I feel like I’m only old enough to have a debut collection. For years, uncertainty about my work was linked to uncertainty about myself. Who am I to call myself a poet? Who am I to suggest that my work might be worth anyone’s time and energy to read or that they should come to a venue to hear me read?
For me, I imagine it comes from growing up in poverty. By the time I was five years old, I had already eaten enough bologna to reconstruct a bunch of pigs or whatever animal the bologna came from. Beanie Weenies, Pinto Beans and Cornbread. (Even when we were broken up, I couldn’t eat Vienna sausages. That was a step too far.) Shoe stretches on my dress shoes so they would last longer, free lunch at school. Hearing mom and dad argue about money. How could I grow up like this and somehow feel comfortable thinking that writing poetry was a legitimate way to make a living?
Something has changed in me in the last few years. This started even before the book came out. I found myself fully able to embrace the notion of creating literature as a legitimate way to make a living. Many times I have been saved by other people’s poems and stories. Then why was it hard for me to believe that my words could have real and lasting value to a reader? Not just believing in the power of words or the importance of art, but believing that this was a legitimate endeavor for me, that I could participate in this way of life without feeling like an impostor — that’s been a world-changing shift for me.
This realization has made my book more enriching in the world. If I had published my first collection earlier, I would have struggled with imposter syndrome more severely. Instead, I’m in a better place now to acknowledge and accept the value of writing as a way of life, and to celebrate that this is how I want to spend a significant portion of my days. I can now write without feeling like I have to constantly justify this choice to my life.
So, here I am, approaching the age of fifty with my “geriatric debut”. Do I still want my first collection to be published soon? Some days, sure. But mostly, I find myself just grateful, knowing that I wasn’t ready to share my work in full force when I was younger. Despite my graying hair and graying beard, I now have a different kind of vigor and strength than I had when I was in my thirties. Sure, I don’t want to live out of the car, and when I travel to study, I don’t want to be away from my family for more than a few days at a time, but this is my job and my life, My Debut in old age, and I love that I get the chance to share my book with readers.
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sacred boardthis TRP by Donovan McAbee: Available through The University Press of SHSU.
