Approaching The Cup is Done!

Book incoming, 1-month pause for paid subscribers

The final manuscript for Approaching The Cup is locked in at 49 poems.

I started publishing my poems on Silver Door in March of 2023 and I’m happy to say that this collection, which includes one poem stretching back to as early as 2009, is finally complete.

This project began in March of 2023. Anyone who wants the full backstory can read Approaching The Cup?, but here is an excerpt:

Before finding myself, against all expectations, converting to Christianity and becoming a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, I had, without much success, attempted to make a religion of sorts out of Poetry. This journey was partially documented in Silver Door’s most popular post: Human Conversion in The Digital Age: e-Platforms, Orthobros, & The Winsome Wars.

…

Many poets and artists, religious and secular, will often speak of their artistic mission in a variety of registers. But as I slowly settled into my new life as an Orthodox Christian and had time to reflect on how I’d arrived at what not so many years before would have seemed the heights of madness, I realized that, whatever I thought I was doing in my own poetic mission, it was really God who was using poetry to minister to me. The thousands upon thousands of poems I'd read and written were signposts along the way of my unwitting pilgrimage to Christ’s Bride. As a poet, I naturally found this reflection deeply satisfying.

Still, I was left with the question: what should I do with this poetry thing? Or, more specifically, what should I do with my poems? I could just chuck them out and be done with the whole matter. I confess there was that temptation. At various points in my young life I'd found the pursuit of poetry for its own sake deeply unsatisfying.

But after giving it a good deal of thought, consulting with my priest, and then a trusted friend, I decided that I should do, well, at least something! To not would be ungrateful, to turn my back on what had led me to what I had from a young age so deeply craved.

Flash forward to today, over the last two months I’ve simply been trying to do too much at once and getting little done in the process. So for the next month, Saturday posts will come from J.Z, guest contributors, and the back catalog so I can focus on kickstarting the logistical side of getting ATC out of the digital and into human hands.

With that said, paid subscribers will have their payments paused until September 3.

Regular readers will be quite familiar with the image at the top of the post, created by POWERFUL illustrator

David M Flores

. I’m delighted to say that he has graciously contributed more work to the upcoming book, which will be handmade by

Colin Miller

at Sylvan Bookworks.

As with most things Silver Door, there is no set time frame which is why I’m taking a break from prose for the next month.

I still believe that Substack is the best platform for helping poets return Poetry to cultural significance, but for that to happen we have to take poems off the screen and put them into hands and mouths.

Thank you for your attention.