In Disappearing Ink (the sequel)

Why This Book is Titled "In Disappearing Ink (the sequel)? Unknown poets get an audience on open mic nights. On arriving, we pencil our names at the bottom of a yellow legal pad. The night's featured poet reads first and then, time allowing, authors on the list have a turn. We head to the podium to pour out a poem and our hearts. Polite applause may follow. There's a flicker in time after such a reading, in the seconds it takes for the poet to travel from the podium back to his or her seat, when...kazaam...it's as if the words of the poem vanish... and are never seen or heard again. A friend, Tracy Hart, compares it to Buddhists who create a mandala. They may labor in shifts for weeks, moving grains of colored sand to craft magnificent art. But when finally finished, they wipe the art away... a metaphor that nothing mortal endures. That reality suggested the title of the first In Disappearing Ink published in 2017 and now the tile of this book... with the addition of the word "more". It brings to mind another human reality - perhaps more upbeat: the joy anyone who has ever written a poem knows - a pleasure arguably more immediate than writing in any other genre. And since many try their hand at verse, I'm, betting you know how good it feels when you replace an imperfect with a perfect word; and that sense of pleasure when a jarring phrase is improved by shifting its position in a stanza. Here's to every poet's hours at the keyboard, to the stanzas, the rhymes created, and the contentment of making, then sharing a poem. I. Michael Grossman