Author Q&A with Carey Salerno

Author Q&A with Carey Salerno

Carey Salerno is the executive director and publisher of Alice James Books. She is the author of Shelter (2009), Tributary (2021), and the forthcoming The Hungriest Stars (fall 2025, Persea Books). Her poems, essays, and articles about her work as a publisher can be found in places like American Poetry Review, Poets & Writers, NPR, and The New York Times. She serves as the co-chair for LitNet: The Literary Network and occasionally teaches poetry and publishing arts at the University of Maine at Farmington. In 2021, she received the Golden Colophon Award for Independent Paradigm Publishing from CLMP for the leadership and contributions of Alice James Books. careysalerno.com

Carey’s poem, “Little Sparrow, Baby Mole (The MoMo Twins)” was featured in Issue #17.

Tell us about yourself.

Well, I’ll start with this question gives me superlative-for-high anxiety, because I always feel like there’s nothing really to tell. Moreover, I hate talking about myself. It always feels indulgent, or maybe I’m just more of an in-person vibes person? At the same time, I really love being indulgent. I love joy, fulfillment, and pleasure in absolute excess. As well I love beach naps, green olive and pineapple pizza, shoes, snowboarding, poems that I can turn over in my head all day long, and car washes with rainbow soap. I grew up in Michigan, so I have a deep love for sand dunes, snake grass, and apple orchards. My first job was farming Christmas trees on my family farm. I always wanted to wield the machete, but we retired the business before I was old enough to do so. As much as I was happy to no longer be chased by blue racers, I highly regret that. Oh, I’m also a poet and work in publishing. I’d love one day to dream in black and white.

The form of “Little Sparrow, Baby Mole (The MoMo Twins),” is very unique. Would you say poetry has more creative flexibility than other forms of writing? Why or why not?

I think so, though I see more formal variation and risk-taking starting to come into play in other genres, to be seen as more acceptable in other genres. There’s a book I just read, Exhibit by R.O. Kwon where she weaves short prayers and also Korean lore throughout the “main” narrative in a way that feels highly poetic. I fell in love with that book. God, I’m still in love with that book. In terms of poetry, back to the topic, there’s more flexibility because the medium is, typically, more brief. There’s more room for ambiguity and syntactical dance in poems because poets aren’t working with elements like plot, which must at some point be somewhat straightforward. Readers of poetry are more willing to readily accept a poem solely for its emotional impressions, or to walk away from a poem having, perhaps, not entirely understood its meaning. They can find elements of satisfaction and joy in that act.

What is your favorite form of poetry to write? Why?

I don’t necessarily know if it’s my favorite, but it’s become obvious to me that I’m highly attracted to the couplet form. Most of my poems seem to fall into place that way even though as I draft them, they arrive as blocks of text or whatever a block of text is within my phone’s notes app. Still, I find the couplet so useful for elongating metaphor and extending narrative. It’s also perfect for making leaps in the narrative or sudden gear switches in tone. Ugh, and internal rhyme. What a lovely form for playing with sound. I wonder if this is because the stanza is so brief that it doesn’t really allow its reader/writer the opportunity to get too comfortable. Like, just when one settles into a couplet, it’s completing its task and you’re onto the next one. They feel temporal, an invitation to stay and to go simultaneously, and perhaps that’s what I love about them? Their fleetingnesses. Their perpetuation of threshold. 

What do you hope people experience while reading “Little Sparrow, Baby Mole (The MoMo Twins)?”

I hope the readers of this poem will gain a deeper understanding of the internal landscape of individuals who experience pregnancy loss and those who have to make unexpected and complicated decisions with regard to pregnancy. This poem delves into the internal landscape of a speaker who had to make a hard decision to abort part of a pregnancy that involved not one but three embryos. In this poem, the speaker grapples with finding her grounding. She’s awash with emotions, many of which society doesn’t have adequate structures to help her cope with or express. When people read this poem, I hope they experience the complexity of grief and longing attached to the loss and also to the loss that is the loneliness we’ve devised for people who experience this type of loss. Within loss is a feeling of interminability, and beyond the specificity of the poem’s subject matter, I think its readers can find resonance with that concept emotionally.

How, as a writer, do you hope to connect with your readers, whether through poetry, essays, or articles?

The way I hope I connect with readers is the same way I hope to connect with a writer when I read. By that, I mean, I hope to find/make authentic connections with the writer and their work. I want to find/establish an element of generosity. I want vulnerability. I love drawing and being drawn deep into the interior world of someone else. It’s my favorite place to be. 

How has a career in publishing helped your own writing?

Has it? I’m kidding a little. In the sense that I read a lot of good writing constantly which challenges me in my own work, I’ll say it’s helped me immensely. For those same exposures, though, it also can be difficult to sustain belief in my own voice. There’s so much good writing out there. Hm, I think it’s made me have to work harder to believe in myself, to put conscious effort toward quieting the negative self-talk. Oh, and I have a deep and abiding love for every editor and publisher out there. I don’t think I would have the same appreciation for the ridiculous amount of work they do without being in the field myself.

How has your writing style changed from your first publication to today?

I’ve certainly become more open and more willing to take risks. After my first book came out, I didn’t feel the pressures of perfection so intensely. I don’t think that feeling is incredibly unique. When you read my first book, Shelter, you see a lot of left-hand justified 1-page or shorter poems. I’ve certainly branched out in terms of form and in terms of trusting the language of the poem to guide me toward its most organic form. A friend of mine recently told me that if someone handed my second book to them after they’d read my first book, they wouldn’t have thought they were by the same poet. Perhaps this means part of my identity as a poet is being receptive to evolution. I’m really flexible in my writing (more flexible than I realized), and to me writing is about following my intuition. My intuition will always be mine, so in that sense, I guess, it is a rather fixed entity; however, my intuition continues to develop over time as I amass knowledge, curiosity, and deeper faith in the capabilities of language.

As a publisher, what are you looking for in a writer?

Someone who makes me feel, think, see. That might seem simple. Perhaps it’s meant to be simple, to seem simple, and it is…or it isn’t. This is poet-me responding, so please forgive such indulgence in opacity. I hope that any and every writer I read is someone who is trying to connect with me in an authentic way. What I mean by that is there’s no withholding, no purposeful confusion, no manipulation–unless, I’m in on it all. I look for writers who show up looking for readers, who want readers. They’re out for partners in their crimes and confessions. There’s something they want to say. If that’s you, I already want to be your confidante. 

What do you think of when you hear, “The Good Life?”

I bet NO ONE has given this answer to you ever before, but honestly, Kanye West and these lyrics: “The good life, let’s go on a livin’ spree / Shit, they say the best things in life are free.” My son, disgruntled about school at the tender age of 11, recently got into West’s Graduation album, which I listened to in my 20’s. I was relieved because he was listening to so much Weird Al it was getting unnerving. What an intense time. Regardless of my feelings about Kanye now, I love the idea of going on a living spree and celebrating the fact that the best things in life are free, even while these two ideas seem to conflict with each other. It gets me wondering what really is free, but that’s a conversation for another time. Perhaps it’s the energy of “The Good Life” which I also equate to being a reminder about having one life and the fact that it’s up to me to make it good, to define what makes it good, and pursue that with a sense of seriousness and responsibility. Is it morbid to say I think about being on my deathbed a lot? I don’t want to be in a place of regret when I die, wishing I’d done whatever it was I didn’t. That feels like failure to me, to be sad when dying, to be reluctant because I wish I had more time to do whatever it was I didn’t for whatever reason I didn’t. Wow, that got a little dark. “The Good Life” is pure light, though. Thank you for that and this thoughtful conversation. I appreciate you and all you do for writers!

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Thank you, Carey, for being a part of our growing community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We’re glad we were able to connect and we wish you the best with your current and future writing endeavors and with your publishing career.