Undercover and the Paperback Extras

When Miss Jill Santopolo invited me to create an "Extras" supplement for Undercover, my novel about a rising young poet and her escapades, I thought a while before concluding that I wanted to tell Elisa's' going-forward story through a letter and a series of new poems. Elisa's story didn't end for me just because I happened to stop writing it. She had always kept growing up in my mind—I'd find her in my imagination, I'd see her out in the streets—and creating the Extras gave me a chance to put down some of where she's traveled.

Yesterday, when I returned home from teaching the next generation of young writers, the Extras were here in my electronic mailbox, waiting for a final review. The timing was Jill-like—creating an intersection between the poet I'd conjured (and partly been) and the poets and writers I'd just left in a light-filled room on the second floor of a coffee shop.

Here is Elisa, then, from the letter that introduces her new book of poems. Undercover, with its Extras, will be available as a paperback in May.

I've gotten interested, I'm saying, in all the ways that language bruises itself. In things that bump and collide. The past against the present. The want against the need. The truth against the lie. The weird against the regular. The smell of red against the color of a song. Poems do not explain, but they do suggest. They mean the most when they buck up and buckle.