I'm Officially "Hot"! (and anti-papist, apparently)

I googled my forthcoming book - as one can, I think, be forgiven for doing in the nervous weeks leading up to its publication. Here's what I saw at Library Journal.com, under the headline "What Else Is Hot?: More Spring Poetry," by Barbara Hoffert, dated Dec. 1:

"This time, I’ve organized the 22 titles by category—a dangerous venture as the best poetry can’t easily be contained by labels. Joseph Harrington’s Things Come On: an amneoir ('Storytelling') might just as easily be classed under 'Political Edge,' for instance, given how it parallels the story of a death with the story of Watergate. And Harrington’s work could have as easily been classed with Alice Notley’s Culture of One and Tom Waits and Michael O’Brien’s Hard Ground in another category called 'Multimedia,' given their blending of material beyond verse."

OK - so I've never seen my name in print alongside Alice Notley's, let alone Tom Waits', so that got me interested. Here's what she says about my book:

"In Things Come On: an amneoir (Wesleyan Univ. Apr. 2011. ISBN 9780819571359. $22.95 eISBN 9780819571366. $11.99), Joseph Harrington blends poetry, prose, documentation, and images to narrate his mother’s death from breast cancer around the time of Watergate. Both the public and the private event involved denial and a struggle to get at the truth (hence amneoir, which combines memoir and amnesia)."

She goes on to present the following teasers re: forthcoming books by two of my fellow (?) Wesleyan poets:

"Evie Shockley’s the new black (Wesleyan Univ. Mar. 2011. ISBN 9780819571403. $22.95) considers various concepts of 'blackness,' past and present, while Elizabeth Willis’s Address (Wesleyan Univ. Mar. 2011. ISBN 9780819570982. $22.95. eISBN 9780819570994. $11.99) considers how civic structures shape the way we think."

Personally, I can't wait to read those. And, since all three of us are reading at the AWP on Feb. 4, I probably won't have to wait as long as these pre-pub notices indicate (in fact, you can pre-order all three from University Press of New England, amazon, etc. now).

In other news, I found my book listed on Boomerang.com, Australia's answer to Amazon. My name was listed as "Professor Joseph Harrington" - which I certainly have been called before (and worse!), but never as a by-line. I clicked on Professor Joe's name. I did not find Poetry and the Public: The Social Form of Modern U.S. Poetics (for instance), but I did find this title:

Popery and Treason Inseparable. in a Discourse Upon the 5th of November, Not Forgetting the 4th. Wherein Is Also Some Remarkable Memoirs Discovering the Arts of the Papists in the Death of King Charles the First, by Professor Joseph Harrington (1714)

Faith and begorrah - 'tis not me! On me honor, I don't think the man is even kin.