The title of this new section is a pun on the popular Michael Caine movie What’s It All About Alfie? from the 1960s. Welcome to my Lucid Moon Review Poetry Website. Let me explain the purpose of this website and what a poetry zine is. A poetry zine is a non -professionally published magazine, like the original Lucid Moon Poetry Magazine which was photocopied. It often has a kitchen table do-it-yourself look. My website costs a fraction of what the magazine costs. A perzine is a personal zine, where the author talks about himself. He has many fans who are interested in reading about him. My website is equal parts personal zine or perzine, an online poetry newsletter / magazine, and an online poetry website.
There are seven public poetry columns with guidelines on each area. The guidelines for my poetry website are listed on the individual poetry column areas on the website. Please do not send snail mail, disc, or email website submissions, because all of the poetry columns have been converted to guest book areas. You can type in or copy and paste your best poems directly into the seven public poetry columns.
When you submit your poem, you will automatically be sent a bulk email confirmation where you will be asked to click on a link to confirm your submission, and your poem will be added to the website. This measure was added to each column to prevent spamming and unwanted messages. At the end of very month, I will remove objectionable poems. Please proofread and edit your poems before you finalize your submission.
There is also an extensive Other Cool Website Links Page, with links to other poetry websites, poetry cyber cafes and writing resources. There is also an extensive archives with articles, book reviews, columns, drawings, essays, interviews, poems and short stories by myself and others. There is also a letters column and a guest book with more ways to express yourself. There is much to check out.
The 5 most frequently asked questions about me by all my poetry friends are: How's your health? (I had a near - fatal car accident in October 2001 which has left me paralyzed); What books do you have available now?; What projects are upcoming?; When will Lucid Moon Poetry Magazine be resurrected?; When will all the new poetry columns on my Lucid Moon Poetry Website be ready?. I answer questions about my health and personal life in the quarterly updated homepage withly A Message From Ralphy. After a year of recuperating from my near fatal auto accident of October 8 2001, I resumed writing the message on the home page area, archived in my Message From Ralphy Homepage / Newsletter Archives.
My first two poetry books, Wounded Heart, Naked Soul (heartfelt romantic love poems) and Scattershot Haze (a tribute to the Beat poets, hippies and musicians of the 1950s and 1960s), are available for $16 each plus $4.95 postage and handling directly at Xlibris (1-888-7Xlibris or www.Xlibris.com). They are also available at www.Amazon.com, www.BarnesandNoble.com and www.Borders.com, but I get the most royalties from www.Xlibris.com.
Xlibris stupidly lost my entire original manuscript for my Lucid Moon Review Poetry Magazine which I wanted to resurrect later this year. They didn't tell me who my new agent was when he left, and they didn't answer my e-mails about pricing and scanning fees. They also didn't answer my Dad's livid letter to the president of the company. So I can't recommend them. The only reason I am not withdrawing my books from them is that I spent $1000 on each book and that would be money down the drain if I took them to my new printing on demand publisher, AuthorHouse. I just have to correct two dozen mistakes in each book and that will cost $300 each and I don't have that so I will hold off for now. You can check out AuthorHouse (formerlry !stBooiks) and iUniverse, which is the least expensive of the 3 "printing on demand" companies, on my Other Cool Website page, but I am going with AuthorHouse to do all my upcoming projects. I would highly recommend them, they are more professional than Xlibris. They have hooked up with the largest book distributor in the U.S., Engram. The only complaint I have with Xlibris and AuthorHouse is that they claim in their ads that you can publish a book for $600 when the actual cost at AuthorHouse is $925 including front and back cover design, and not including the hardcover options and $3 per page scanning fee. It is $300 - $600 extra with promotional packages. This is bait and switch advertising.
I have decided that my third book will be a cartoon book, called Monster Cartoon Book. It is 315 pages, 81/2 by 11, soft cover, 360+ cartoons. At my Lucid Moon Palooza Poetry Festival, in June 2003, we had a cartoon gallery of 3 dozen of my best cartoons. They were a hit! At least five people came up to me and said the cartoons were hilarious, and asked when was I going to publish them in a book? As soon as you give me the money, honey!! I went over the prices and it will cost $950 including promotion. It would cost $5 a page to scan them in, and we scanned in over 300 pages, so we saved over $1500. The book willl be published by AuthorHouse, hopefully in the summer of 2006.
It Is approximately 6 month wait for each book. My sister is helping to pay for the cost of the cartoon book, which is $948. AuthorHouse is giving us a $300 discount on the price, and we saved $1500 by scanning in 300 pages ourselves.
The cartoon book will sell well, but the poetry books will sell squat. I’m just doing them for posterity. The cartoon book will pay for the three big poetry books. I think I’m done with poetry, my poetic creativity is all dried up, but I keep coming up with new cartoon captions for the next cartoon book. I’ve begun experimenting with writing new captions to old drawings, and it seems to be working. That’s how I’ll do the sequel to this book.
I organized all 900 pages of my poem pages into 9 100 page books. I published two books already, Wounded Heart, Naked Soul and Scattershot Haze, but they didn’t sell squat. Little would I realize that publishing poetry books was cost prohibitive, that no one buys poetry books, and that I would never make back my initial investment of $1000 a book! So I’m packaging the poems into 3 300 page volumes, because my publisher charges the same, no matter what size the book is. Why spend $9000 when I can spend just $3000?
The first volume in my complete poetry collection is called Half In Love With Easeful Death (Handwritten Poems, Juvenilia, and Dreaming Of Mercy Street: A Dream Diar y). This first big book of my complete works contains 1 book – length chapter of handwritten poems, 1 chapter of early poems not in the other poetry books, and the final chapter of a provocative dream diary. I was able to complete a cover drawing for only 1 of these poetry books, Dreaming Of Mercy Street: A Dream Diary, I appropriate the famous mysterious Henri Rousseau painting The Sleeping Gypsy, with the lion nuzzling the sleeping woman for this book about dream diaries, poems about dreams, and an essay about dreams, subliminal advertising, music, and everything that was bothering me at the time. .
The second volume in my complete poetry collection is called Poems For Suicidal Lovers (Wounded Heart, Naked Soul, Scattershot Haze, and Eyes & Imagination). The cover for Wounded Heart, Naked Soul depicted a simple line drawing of a guy with a black hole where his heart used to be and his heart flying a way. My little niece Brittany thought that the heart was dancing! The book dealt with loss of loved ones, my manic depression and bisexuality, and had heartfelt romantic love poems. Scattershot Haze is a tribute to the Beat Poets, hippies and musicians of the 1950’s and 1960’s I have long admired. The cover features a caricature of me playing the clarinet backed by a hipster with a goatee playing the snare, perhaps a bit of a cliché. I was going to include a flourish of color, a blue full moon, the same way the first book cover had a red heart Then I ran out of money after these first two poetry books were published separately . I’m hoping I’ll get some money from the cartoon book to publish the three big volumes of poetry books. The third poetry book in this volume is called Eyes And Imagination, an homage to Arthur Rimbaud and Jim Morrison, containing my original drawings of them and my reviews of movies about them
The third volume in my complete poetry collection is called Starting From Clinton, Starting From New Hope (Two Souls Tripping, The Warm Hello Of The Sun, and Lucid Moon: Haiku and Nature Poems). Two Souls Tripping is a collaboration with my poetry friend Kevin M. Hibshman. I wrote five poems and he wrote five answer mirror poems. For some reason I never got around to drawing a drawing for this book, but I did do drawings for the five others in this series. I would have probably have drawn a caricature of Kevin and me dancing. I’m going to ask Barb Yordy, a friend of Kevin with whom he has collaborated on poetry, art, and music projects, to this drawing of us. The Warm Hello Of The Sun is more heartfelt romantic love poems, and contains a whimsical drawing of the sun wearing shades, quite silly since the sun can’t see it’s on brightness! I’m pretty sure it was influenced by the drawing on Raisin Bran cereal box. Lucid Moon: Haiku And Nature Poems is poems about Nature, Creativity, and Haiku. I reused the sloppy drawing of the wolf howling at the moon My three big volumes of my poetry books are to be published by Authorhouse at www.auhorhouse.com. They wlll also available at www.Amazon.com, www.BarnesandNoble.com and www.Borders.com. I’m hoping I can publish them over the next four years. Yeah, sure!
I have added several new poetry columns to my Lucid Moon Review Poetry Website (www.lucidmoonpoetry.com): Your Poetry Page; Moon Beams (moon themed poems); A Few Poems A Day Keep The Psychiatrist Away (topical poems); Poetry Essays and Lectures; Dissect A Poem (when you go line by line and tell what you were referring to); Quotable Poetry Quotes and Jokes About Art, Literature, Music and Poetry. You can send submissions by email attachment, but not in the body of the email, where the text often gets broken up. Please do not send submissions by snail mail or disc. Guidelines are on each poetry column.
I'm also adding direct links to AuthorHouse (formerly 1st Books),the premier printing on demand book publishing company in America, the Library Of Congress poetry project, Frank Moore's Luver Radio and D.U.D.E. (Digger Underground Distribution Exchange).
I've had to discontinue the Lucid Moon Review Poetry Newsletter because it was too lengthy at 40 pages, too time consuming and too expensive at 4 hours / $160 to post.
In the newsletters I promoted my own writings, as well as that of others. It’s an overview of what’s on the site, with quarterly messages from me, cartoons, articles, book reviews, essays, interviews, poems sand short stories. It’s a real do - it - yourself kit. You can print out the back issues for free, staple it, and peruse it at your leisure. l suggest using the thicker cardstock paper on the front and back so the issue is more durable.
I like reading magazines rather than strain my eyes on a computer. So the back issues of the newsletter are another way of viewing the material on the website. I am in the process of archiving aall 12 newsletter issues. The material appeared elsewhere on the site. I’ll just add new postings directly to the archives. You’ll just have to view the whole website as an interactive newsletter. I will just update the home page every quarter with a new color cartoon, a What’s New Pussycat section, and A Message From Ralphy. I hope you enjoy all my efforts!
Lucid Moon Review Poetry Website Ralph Haselmann Jr., editor
Morris Hills Center , Room 427 W, 77 Madison Ave., Morristown, NJ 07960
(973) 993-9744, ralphylucidmoon@yahoo.com , www.lucidmoonpoetry.com