Only a poet would worry so little about traditional measures of success that she would ignore the sales figures of her recently published book. Only she would know better than to hold her art—famously neglected by the public—to such standards, preferring to focus instead on word of mouth, anecdotal praise, or critical commentary. Whether as a means of self-preservation or the result of an enlightened understanding of poetry's place in our culture, only a poet would look everywhere but the bottom line to gauge the public's reception of her debut collection.

"I don't know how sales have been going," says Rusty Morrison, two years after the Center for Literary Publishing released her debut book Whethering. "I haven't asked." Morrison, whose second collection, the true keeps calm biding its story, will be published by Ahsahta Press in January, was one of eighteen poets included in the first of our annual features on debut poetry, in 2005. And she's not the only one of the bunch who shows so little interest in her receipts.

"I have tried not to focus too much on the numbers, lest I get discouraged by the near invisibility of poetry in mainstream culture," says Dana Goodyear, whose debut collection, Honey and Junk, was published by Norton in 2005. Dan Brenner, author of The Stupefying Flashbulbs, published by Fence Books in 2006, and included in last year's feature, says his debut book has done just "okay."

"A lot of people have been telling me they don't understand it," he says.

But for every poet who ignores the numbers, there is another who, even if he occasionally looks askance at the figures, closely follows his book's progress with equal parts fascination and amusement. "Watching my sales numbers rise and fall on Amazon has been something of a perverse spectator sport," says Thomas Heise about Horror Vacui (Sarabande Books, 2006). "What constitutes good sales for a debut book of poems? Seven hundred and fifty copies? One thousand? Fifteen hundred? The numbers are so minuscule that they're laughable. No one became a poet to make money, but probably all of us want to be read, want literally 'to get the word out,' so sales are important."

The initial print run of How Long She'll Last in This World, María Meléndez's debut, published by the University of Arizona Press in 2006, was fifteen hundred; recently she was told that it would go into a second printing. A year after I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone was published by Turtle Point Press, Anna Moschovakis doesn't know exactly how many copies of it have been sold. "But I believe the book at least broke even by the end of the fall 2006 season," she says, "since I actually got a royalty check in January. I think it was $9.42."

Some books, of course, do manage to produce bigger numbers. Buoyed by reviews in the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and other periodicals, David Tucker's Late for Work (Mariner Books, 2006) sold thirty-eight hundred copies; Victoria Chang's Circle (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005) sold more than a thousand; and Laura Sims's Practice, Restraint (Fence Books, 2005), about five hundred.

But every debut poet knows—regardless of whether they pay attention to them—it's not all about the numbers. In the two years since Coffee House Press published his debut, Somewhere Else, Matthew Shenoda has realized that, "as a writer, success is less a measure of sales numbers and awards and more a measure of human responses."

For some poets, that measure—the responses of critics, and of the readers whom these poets can now count as their own—is a boost, a validation. "The book was a milestone in how others viewed me as a writer," says Susan B. A. Somers-Willet about her debut, Roam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2006). "I was suddenly a legitimate, respected, and successful poet."

But perhaps even more important are the individual responses of the poets themselves. After all the writing and the waiting, the submissions and the revisions, the ordering and the reordering, the contests and the commitments, how does a poet's consciousness of his own work change once he finally sees it in print, published—made public?

Alex Lemon's first collection, Mosquito, published by Tin House Books last year, met with strong approval from readers and critics—as evidenced by the news that his second book, Hallelujah Blackout, will be published by Milkweed Editions in late 2008. But publication also transformed his sense of himself as a poet. "I feel fortunate that instead of paralyzing me, Mosquito's publication has turned into a catalyzing foundation for the rest of my writing," Lemon says. "It allowed me to see my work in a new way, with a new depth.… If anything, Mosquito has made me work harder and spend more time with my writing."

It is not always so. Many of the poets who were included in our first two features and responded to a call for updates reported declines in their productivity following the publication of their books. "I felt creatively lost, ridiculously self-critical, and basically completely unable to write for at least the first year postbook," says Andrea Baker, whose Like Wind Loves a Window was published by Slope Editions in 2005. Baker says she immediately began thinking in terms of a second book rather than just writing poems and allowing a new collection to form organically.

"Don't wish for the endpoint. Attend the deviations," advises Sarah Gridley, who says the publication of Weather Eye Open (University of California Press, 2005)shook her confidence and made her question her faith in writing. "Initially I had what I would call a Dimmesdale experience in having my book published: I felt frocked on the outside, and fraudulent on the inside. Despite all the benefits of having a book published, it was not for me an unalloyed sweetness."

For unpublished poets who are still plugging away at their first manuscripts every day—before work, once the kids have gone to bed, or on the weekends—it is not a comforting point: The reward for finally getting the debut book published isn't absolute. But just as the process of finishing the first collection can never be scripted, the process of moving on to the second is an uncertain one.

"Publishing my first book was a relief and it gave me more confidence about my work," says Heise. "But publishing also creates a set of expectations, not only expectations about the rate at which you publish but also the kind of work you publish. Stylistic expectations, I guess. Your first book is a kind of opening statement and when your second book comes out, it will be measured in terms of the first: Does it 'fulfill the promise' of the debut book? Is it an unwelcome departure (think of the critical reaction to Ashbery's The Tennis Court Oath)? Is it a reiteration? In a sense, then, publishing your first book opens metaphorical doors for you, but it also creates expectations that potentially could be limitations, limitations which one can embrace, surpass, or perhaps simply ignore."

It is still too early for the twelve poets featured here to worry about limitations. After all, they've only just had their first books published. For some it was a relatively simple process; for most it was the culmination of untold hours of writing and hard work, years of studying the art of poetry and the business of publishing. And now that success is theirs, they are, most of them, understandably excited.

"I am ecstatic and supergrateful," says Albert Flynn DeSilver, whose debut, Letters to Early Street, was released in July by La Alameda Press, an independent publisher in New Mexico. "It's been a long and amazingly perfect process—certainly far from smooth or easy, but very life-like—that has brought me to this lovely place of having the book available to the world in such a gorgeous little package."

This isn't the first time DeSilver has seen a collection of his work in print, however. Some Nature was published by the Non-Existent Press in 2004, but that book, he says, doesn't really count as his debut because "it was printed in a microedition—less than a hundred copies—by a 'nonexistent press,' which is code for self-published." Lest self-published poets take umbrage at his apparent dismissal, DeSilver explains that the distinction he makes between a nationally recognized and—more important—distributed press like La Alameda and a marginal self-publishing project like the Non-Existent Press has nothing to do with the relative validity of their activities, but with how broadly they allow the poet to participate in literary culture: "Right now, the scale I'm participating at—reaching hundreds, perhaps thousands of people with my work—feels much more dynamic, more interesting and helpful, than reaching dozens of people a few years ago by being self-published."

Prior to the February publication of his poetry debut, Why Speak? (Norton), Nathaniel Bellows already had a book of his own on the shelf too. But in his case it was a novel, On This Day, and it was far from self-published—it was released by HarperCollins in 2003. Bellows says that having had the experience of publishing a novel under his belt made the release of his debut poetry collection a little easier. "Having toured for On This Day, I was lucky to have made some great contacts and relationships with booksellers who were very generous in asking me to come back for Why Speak?"

Bellows, who received an MFA from Columbia University and still lives in New York City, says it took him approximately ten years to write the poems in his new book—the longest of any of this year's debut poets. (The average was just over five years.) Éireann Lorsung says it took her only eighteen months to write Music for Landing Planes By, and she wasn't even planning to publish it. Bill Reichard, her thesis advisor at the University of Minnesota, where Lorsung received her MFA, submitted the collection to Milkweed for her, and it was published in March. Lorsung admits it was a lucky break, one that never would have happened had she not attended graduate school—an experience that ten of this year's twelve debut poets share. "Part of my luck was being able to surround myself with some really talented peers to emulate and be challenged by and receive criticism from," Lorsung says.

Aracelis Girmay had already graduated from New York University's MFA program and moved to Long Beach, California, when she sent her unfinished poetry manuscript to Martín Espada, whom she had met at a workshop at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona, in the summer of 2004. About two months after she sent it to Espada (whose eighth collection, The Republic of Poetry, was published by Norton last year), Girmay received an unexpected e-mail from Alexander "Sandy" Taylor, the codirector of Curbstone Press, a nonprofit publisher of Latin American and Latino literature based in Willimantic, Connecticut, who asked her if he could publish her manuscript once it was finished. As Reichard had done for Lorsung, Espada—knowing that Girmay's work was special—sent it to a publisher whom he suspected would be interested. He was right, and Teeth was published by Curbstone in August.

Other poets—most poets, in fact—need to submit their manuscripts time and again, to contests and during open reading periods, before they find willing publishers. Dorothea Lasky sent her book to approximately two hundred contests and publishers during a period of four years before Wave Books accepted Awe for publication in September. "It was four years full of dark days, self-questioning, and endless regret that I hadn't been born something other than a poet," she says. "I know that the actual length of time I spent trying to get the book published is not actually that long in comparison to others, but just the process of sending out to poetry contests makes the whole thing stretch out into infinity. Trying to get anything published can be very impersonal, especially in the beginning." Lasky compares the process to jumping into an ice-cold swimming pool, "a repetitive jumping, day after day, with no warm towel at the end of it."

"It's disappointing that the economy around publishing doesn't often invest strategically in careful reading," says Steve Willard, who sent different versions of his manuscript to contests and presses for several years. He eventually sent his work to the University of California Press, where, he says, "the editors slog through their own slush pile." There they found Willard's Harm, which was published in April.

It took even longer for Joseph O. Legaspi to find a publisher for his debut, Imago. Legaspi, who cofounded Kundiman, a nonprofit in New York City dedicated to advancing the work of Asian American poets, entered many of the growing number of competitions that offer book publication, without luck. "I was tired—and broke—from entering contests," Legaspi says, "so I decided to pursue the 'open reading' route, and I struck gold." CavanKerry, a nonprofit literary press in Fort Lee, New Jersey, published Imago last month.

At first glance, Chris Martin had a remarkably easy time submitting to contests. The Brooklyn-based poet (not the lead singer of Coldplay) sent his manuscript to just one competition—the Hayden Carruth Award, sponsored by Copper Canyon Press—and he won. But, Martin admits, he had sent other manuscripts to "tons" of other contests before American Music, which will be published this month, met with such quick success. The book is the eighth and final winner of the Hayden Carruth Award, which Copper Canyon recently suspended. "As far as I could tell, there were two or three contests you had to submit to, if only to propitiate the gods of blind chance," Martin says. "This was one of them."

For Alena Hairston, the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize exerted a similar pull. The annual prize, sponsored by Persea Books, is given for a debut collection written by an American woman. After submitting The Logan Topographies without success to around twenty other publishers, Hairston sent it to Persea because, she says, the indie press in New York City publishes "high-quality, genuine works. I knew my manuscript would be read seriously." Evidently it was; her book was published in April.

Dawn Lundy Martin submitted A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering to the Cave Canem Poetry Prize three years in a row before it was finally selected by Carl Phillips and published by the University of Georgia Press last month. She had even been a finalist in 2006, when Harryette Mullen judged the annual contest open to African American poets. Martin says she revised the manuscript, which she describes as "two books in conversation with each other," through collaboration with groups of people whose work she admires and whose opinions she trusts. "I write with two groups—the Black Took Collective and the Southampton Project," she says. "Neither is primarily focused on direct feedback; the value of the process is more situated in writing together, playing writing games, listening to each other's work, and trying to liberate ourselves from our usual writing habits."

Elizabeth Reddin benefited from collaboration of a different sort as she prepared her book, The Hot Garment of Love Is Insecure, for an August publication by the Brooklyn-based independent Ugly Duckling Presse (UDP). Rather than a formal writing group, Reddin worked closely with her friends Anna Moschovakis and Matvei Yankelevich, the editors at UDP who had asked to publish her book. "Anna and Matvei helped all the way," she says. "We talked about every detail, deciding what would be in the book and how it would look. I felt like UDP let me participate in every aspect so I didn't feel out of control."

Like Reddin, Roger Bonair-Agard didn't have to blindly submit his book to a publisher. The fact is, two presses asked him for Tarnish and Masquerade. The first was Third World Press, the forty-year-old independent publisher in Chicago, where the book was slated for publication in early 2005. "Unfortunately, that didn't work out," says Bonair-Agard, "but around the time that Third World was letting me know that they wouldn't be able to do Tarnish, Willie Perdomo had just launched the Cypher Books imprint with Rattapallax and was about to publish Suheir Hammad. He asked for permission to publish Tarnish, I asked for permission to pull my book from Third World Press, and they were very gracious in allowing me to do so."

With a second publisher interested in his work, Bonair-Agard, a two-time national poetry slam champion, can be excused for having thought that production of the physical book would go according to plan. "The biggest surprise was the amount of time and debate that went into the cover design," he says. "I had not expected to have stuff vetoed and have to go back to the drawing board. Once the process was begun, though, I felt like the team there really thought hard about what the cover should convey and how its aesthetics would drive or contribute to the book's dynamic." The cover of Tarnish, which was published in January, turned out just fine, its only problem being that it couldn't contain all the prepublication blurbs the book had received. Instead, a page inside the book was reserved for the praise, including that of four-time national poetry slam champion Patricia Smith, who called Bonair-Agard's poetry a "lilting, uproarious, precise gospel."

And so twelve more talented poets—among hundreds of others—will close out the year as published authors. For some, the reviews, interviews, and promotional readings have already begun; for others, the anticipation of what the book will bring is in full swing. Some will no doubt follow Rusty Morrison's lead and ignore the numbers and the sales rankings; others, like Thomas Heise, will look on with interest—or at least bemusement—as the figures come rolling or trickling in. For some, the year ahead will be empowering, as they work on their next books with newfound confidence; for others, the postpublication period will be one in which to reassess, reconsider, and revise.

No matter what the next year holds, for all of these poets it will be a time of adjustment, of getting used to the idea of being published authors. And that, it turns out, is not as easy as it sounds.

"When I first heard Imago was picked up for publication I was in utter disbelief, then I slipped into a mild depression," Legaspi says. "My reaction was most unexpected. I thought I'd be blitzed-out elated, and I was, but there was also fear and other existential angst. In a way, I got comfortable with not being published, rejection became a sort of being—not because I didn't believe in my work—and I wallowed in what I deemed to be an injustice to my unsung talent. Of course, I snapped out of it and realized that I needed to step up and embrace this. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I felt that I entered a new phase in my life: I'm a published writer! That's no small feat."

Nathaniel Bellows, author of Why Speak? [3] (Norton)
Age: Thirty-five
Residence: New York City
Graduate degree: MFA from
Columbia University
Jobs: Freelance writer, artist, small press publisher
Influences: Robert Frost, Richard Hugo, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Time spent writing the book: Ten years
Time spent finding a publisher: One year
Why Norton? "I'd grown up reading the Norton Anthology; they publish authors I admire and they produce beautiful books."
Sample: "The ivy split, released / a peacock. The blue caught my eye; all its eyes caught my eye—all its eyes, / splayed out along the tail, which it dragged across the grass, a heavy net."
Blurb: Richard Howard: "His unchallengeable voice, new among us but veteran for poetry."
What's next: "I'm working on another novel, a collection of linked short stories, and more poems."
Tips: "Try to publish as many poems as possible in literary magazines—build up your acknowledgments page so that when editors look at your manuscript, they know you've been making an effort to get your work out. Try to figure out a way to best deal with rejection so that it does not completely discourage or debilitate you. Obviously this is going to be different for everyone, but getting rejected is such a huge part of this process."

Roger Bonair-Agard, author of Tarnish and Masquerade (Cypher Books)
Age: Thirty-nine
Residence: Brooklyn
Graduate degree: None
Jobs: Teacher, performer
Influences: Amiri Baraka, Martín Espada, Audre Lorde, Black Stalin, Derek Walcott
Time spent writing the book: Eight years
Why Cypher? "The imprint's mission appealed to me; that idea that they would publish the best possible voices who plied their trade in the performance poetry world."
Sample: "I lost my virginity to calypso / to the songs of slaves / the ghosts of souls that disappeared / with languages lost"
Blurbs: Amiri Baraka, Colin Channer, Kwame Dawes, Daphne Gott-lieb, Patrick Rosal, Patricia Smith: "There is simply no resisting these stanzas."
What's next: "The second book, whose working title is 'Extra Cover,' is a collection of poems centered around the game of cricket—what it was like to grow up black in the West Indies at a time when we dominated this white, colonial, gentleman's sport."
Tips: "Think hard about what you want the book to say once you think you have a book; what this volume will encapsulate about your voice, or indicate about your place in the world."

Albert Flynn DeSilver, author of Letters to Early Street [4] (La Alameda Press)
Age: Thirty-nine
Residence: Woodacre, California
Graduate degree: MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute
Job: Director of senior homecare agency
Influences: Ted Berrigan, Hart Crane, Gerard Manley Hopkins
Time spent writing the book: Two years
Time spent finding a publisher: Seven years
Why La Alameda? "Because of the quality and design of their books, their list of amazing authors, their distribution through the University of New Mexico Press, and the sweetness and kindness of J. B. Bryan and Cirrelda Snider-Bryan."
Sample: "We are led onto Early Street where / the yellow double line down the middle is a noodle / that strangles direction"
Blurbs: Bill Berkson, Paul Hoover, Lisa Jarnot: "A voice fresh with joy, delightful in its innocence."
What's next: "I have a new book of prose poems titled Walking Tooth and Cloud out from French Connection Press and a new, unpublished manuscript of prose poems titled 'Working Title,' which is based on titles from the U.S. Department of Labor's Dictionary of Occupational Titles."
Tips: "Be patient and persistent and stay true to your own heart and to the poems."

Aracelis Girmay, author of Teeth [5] (Curbstone Press)
Age: Twenty-nine
Residence: Brooklyn
Graduate degree: MFA from New York University
Job: Teacher
Influences: Anna Akhmatova, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martín Espada, Ross Gay, Nâzim Hikmet, Audre Lorde, Patrick Rosal, Arundhati Roy
Time spent writing the book: Six years
Time spent finding a publisher: Two months
Why Curbstone? "The social commitment to its readers and writers is absolutely amazing."
Sample: "& even in / that quick departure as the life rushes on, / headlong or backwards, there must, must / be some singing as the hand waves 'be well' / to its other hand, goodbye"
Blurbs: Martín Espada, Nicholasa Mohr: "Her keen observations are put forth with an appetite for life without fear or self-conciousness."
What's next: "I am reworking a collection of short stories that I've lived with now for a few years. And I'm hard at work on a new group of poems."
Tips: "Ask yourself, 'Which books do you love? Who is publishing them? Whose vision—pedagogically—works with yours? What is your ideal scenario?' Remember that you have choices and that you have power—be sure to remember that publishing is mutually beneficial, not just for you, but for the press, too. If ever you have questions, ask them."

Alena Hairston, author of The Logan Topographies [6] (Persea Books), winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize
Age: Thirty-two
Residence: Oakland
Graduate degree: MFA from Brown University
Job: Teacher
Influences: Gayle Jones, Jean Toomer, Carolyn Beard Whitlow
Time spent writing the book: Five years
Number of contests entered: "Around twenty."
Why Persea? "They publish high-quality, genuine works. I knew my manuscript would be read seriously."
Sample: "In the descant of departure, / any arrival is an aria / whose highest pitch / forks the lowest chord / in the underbelly of want. // Beyond the hawthorn, a vibrant loneliness: / Unsteady bridge, love / is afferent, / returns itself."
Blurbs: Donna Masini, Thylias Moss: "Alena Hairston maps the intensity of feeling, the persistence of memory, and the impact of both realized and unrealized dreams as they become part of what is mined and unmined, the danger of collapse always imminent. The vigor with which these lines knit and hold the world is impressive, and honest, and beautiful."
What's Next: "Another book of poetry and a book of fiction."
Tips: "Be resilient. Be kind to yourself. No matter what happens, keep writing."

Dorothea Lasky, author of Awe [7] (Wave Books)
Age: Twenty-nine
Residence: Philadelphia
Graduate degree: MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; pursuing PhD at the University of Pennsylvania
Job: Assistant to the vice dean of Penn's graduate school of education
Influences: William Blake, Søren Kierkegaard, Sylvia Plath
Time spent writing the book: Four years
Time spent finding a publisher: Four years
Why Wave? "They are one of the few poetry publishers out there who truly care about poetry enough to read it closely. Their small staff seems to work tirelessly to spread the good word of poetry in a way that is nonelitist and nondogmatic, and yet is still susceptible to the real world we live in—in the best sort of way."
Sample: "In friendship we are one together and in friendship / I am all soul. No that's wrong, too. / What is a soul all aflame? / If it's a bird in snow. / Then that's what I am."
Blurbs: None.
What's next: "I am working on a second book of poetry."
Tips: "Keep reminding yourself you are trying to publish your book because you have to—because it is something born out of you that must be spoken. Know that every impetus to write is there because there is some reader out there who you must communicate with. Your goal is to find that reader through whatever method you can."