Carey Salerno
Carey Salerno is the executive director and publisher of Alice James Books. She is the author of Shelter (2009) and Tributary (2021). Her third collection of poems, The Hungriest Stars, is forthcoming with Persea Books. She serves as the co-chair for LitNet: The Literary Network and occasionally teaches poetry and publishing arts at the University of Maine at Farmington. In 2021, she received the Golden Colophon Award for Independent Paradigm Publishing from CLMP for the leadership and contributions of Alice James Books.
“…and if fulgurites are so fragile, what does that say about the enduring power of lightning? Of us? We, too, are as petrified. We, too, transformed by every storm…”
I think this paradigm and resistance are what makes poetry so accessible, that there doesn’t have to be one specific outcome, one thing we take away from it but many. It’s difficult, as students or readers, to find comfort with that. We want concrete answers. We prefer knowing to not knowing, and not knowing can conjure negative emotions, frustrations, a feeling of unrest or being unsettled. It’s hard to want to approach material that invites such things, invites complexity, encourages such things from us, and that is comfortable existing within those spaces, that makes endless space for those spaces. It’s really remarkable, actually. God, poetry is so amazing. The infinity of it is profound.
February 18, 2024