MOUNTAIN, 2nd Edition: my first poetry book, corrected and augmented

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Base photo by @heatherbarnes

The passing of a mere 3 years might sound like a little too soon for the release of a book's new edition, especially a poetry book. But it is not entirely me who's responsible for this decision...

You see, every personal project I carry out that has anything to do with art or creativity to any extent, I try to accomplish at an organic pace; that is, I let things come to be as they will. A more pop-ish way to say it would be "I let things flow" —and I flow with them in turn—. That is how I do creative things that are all mine and comply with no deadlines, and that's what has provided the best results for me so far.

So for this book, Mountain, my dear collection of poems, I did exactly that, not only for the first edition (2020), but for this one too. For instance, I got the idea of creating this book back in 2019 (I think it was in June or July specifically), but not long after that, the idea of releasing it on Yama No Hi (August 11th) came to me, and I just had to accept it and do it that way, even if it meant releasing the book more than a year away in the future. I proceeded as such not because I was under any pressure to do so, nor I was forcing myself, but because it just felt like the right thing to do. I like to say that this was the book itself (i.e., the project) talking to me and telling me how I should do things.

Besides, consider the fact that the idea came to me in late June or July 2019 and that Yama No Hi was on August 11th, so I only had a few weeks to put everything together, and I had done absolutely nothing with the project yet. I needed to select the poems that were going in it, I had to come up with a visual concept, with the design, font selection, some sort of introduction, and a few other things that would give shape to the final product. In other words, a whole package of components besides the poems themselves, I knew that 40 or so days were nowhere near enough to do all that and do it right, so it became clear that the smart thing to do was to set the release date for the next year, so I would have enough time to give this project enough time and love.

And much love I gave it, alright. So much so that, in the few times that I came back to Mountain since I published it, every single time I found myself delighted with it. Yes, there were a handful of grammar errors and typos in it that slipped away here and there —which I was too dumb not to spot in time and then too lazy to correct them before long—, but when it came to the content, it was perfect; it was still untouchably beautiful, just as I felt it was on the day of its release, all too well designed and laid out. It didn't feel like it aged a bit, and in no instance whatsoever did I feel like I should have done things in a different way, included something that I left out, or excluded something that I put in.

The book came out 100% complete, and every single detail was perfect as it was. No later changes, no regrets, nothing; only minor grammar errors that didn’t affect the act of reading. What that tells me is that I did things well in the first place, and it was all thanks to the fact that I let things unfold, as I said, organically, partially the way I planned to do it and partially the way the book itself wanted to come along. I just relaxed, took it easy, and listened.

And this is exactly the same reason why I have the certainty that this re-edition was meant to be in 2023. Not only was it objectively about time to correct the grammar errors and typos in the book once and for all, many months after I spotted them, but other things that at the beginning had nothing to do with the book converged beautifully and naturally into a point in time where everything started to look like Mountain was claiming loudly to be reworked. The main thing that would gradually let me know that this tacit request was being put out there for me to pick it up was, of course, the music of the late great Townes Van Zandt.

Since I came to know about Townes in the spring of last year, he has become my most recent favorite musician. By June this year, I was constantly listening to his second studio album, called Our Mother the Mountain, and one day, by mid-July, I was quite hooked on his song My Proud Mountains, and it just hit me: "This is the right time to re-edit my book": to revisit, correct it, and (re-)release it, not before including, of course, a little piece of content as a tribute to Townes, which, again, only felt natural and rightful.

I explain this beautiful conjunction of elements in further detail in the book’s new encomium (page 73), which is both a short tale about how I came across Townes’s music, and a praise to the Texan songwriter, for whom I’ve also written a poem, included in this new edition as well. On the way, I also found it appropriate to use this edition’s publication to commemorate the foundation of the state of Colorado (which took place on August 1st, 1876), and that’s why I’ve decided to publish the English version of this 2nd edition of Mountain on such a day.

There's also a Spanish version of this edition of Mountain, just as with the first one. Such a version does not feature mere translations of the poem and the encomium I wrote for Townes. Instead, it includes a translation of My Proud Mountains, and yes, an encomium, but with a different perspective to it, still revolving around the poet. If you wish to read that encomium too but you can't read Spanish, I would recommend you to download the book and use a good online translator (such as deepl.com) to translate the text.

Illustration of Townes Van Zandt by Sara Aiello