Poetry Friday: A Mermaid’s Chair and Anthology Update

Mermaid’s Chair off the coast of St. Thomas, USVI. © Carol Labuzzetta, 2024

Poetry First

On the last day of our vacation, we hiked to Mermaid’s Chair. You can read about it in this Medium.com (click Medium.com) article from last week.

The following is the poem inspired by this place.

Mermaid’s Chair


An outcrop of rock
Overlooking the sea
And the ocean as far as
One can see.

Turquoise Caribbean waters
Lull ships that pass by
While Ocean waves crash
Nearby, on the other side

This rock divides two,
Great bodies of Blue—
Caribbean and Atlantic
Take care when you do

Visit this small point of land
For on Mermaids Chair
There’s still careful
Observing left for you

© Draft, Carol Labuzzetta, 2024

Mermaid’s Chair. © Carol Labuzzetta, 2024.

The update on the anthology is as follows:

I have the book back from the editor and have made all the changes she recommended. Most of the problems included syntax, punctuation, or formatting errors. Do not be alarmed. There were not that many.

Succinctly, the changes include adding hyphens to phrases, commas, and apostrophes for possession (if appropriate). Changing en-dashes to em-dashes or visa versa. All titles were standardized to be all capital letters with a sentence case subtitle if appropriate as per individual poem. Bylines were standardized to be similar in format, placement, and style unless formatting prohibited it. Title colons were omitted if there was a subtitle. This standardized how they appeared. And if verb-tense agreement had to be addressed she brought that to my attention as well. Untitled poems were left untitled and listed as this in the Table of Contents.

If you are okay with these small changes being made (no one’s work was drastically changed from what you saw on the proofs) you do not have to contact me and I will not contact you about the small changes either. There is a good chance you might not even notice the change.

But there are a few people I will contact if I feel there was enough change recommended by the editor to clear it with you. These mostly consist of comma, hyphen placement, and period placement, change from en to em dash, and on occasion a change in verb tense or descriptor.

If you receive an email from me regarding these changes and whether or not they are okay with you, please respond promptly. We are in the last stages of editing before I place the Canva copy of the book in KDP. In some cases, during this process, I’ve had to chase people down to communicate, and I’d rather not have to do that. Thank you in advance.

This book will come out this month as long as the upload to KDP and the preview of the hard copy arrives without many issues. I will let you know a release date as soon as I know!

All in all, this has been a wonderful experience and I plan to do another anthology in the future!

Thank you, all, for your support!

Today’s round-up is Linda Baie, who is one of the poets featured in the upcoming anthology! Thanks for hosting Linda! You can visit the round-up link on her blog TeacherDance.org.

16 thoughts

  1. Busy traveling, but it also must have been so relaxing to “be” elsewhere, Carol, loving new sites and taking new adventures, like that Mermaid’s Chair! Thanks for the update for the anthology. I wish you fewer punctuation changes, more joy in the finish! Happy March!

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  2. Carol, I’m so excited about the anthology! It will be fun to see it printed. What a great experience for us too. What a beautiful setting for your vacation, and I’m sure the change in weather was a lovely welcome in February. My favorite part of the poem is the anticipation of “There’s still careful / Observing left for you”

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    1. Thanks, Denise! I appreciate your support and participation in the anthology! I hope you’ll be pleased! Mermaid’s chair was a special place that I’m sure we’ll return to again. I’d like to walk out to the chair but I’ve always been very respectful of water and its power. We’ll see – the timing will have to be perfect – a very low tide!

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  5. Carol, the small strip of land offers so much for an imaginative mind. Thank you for sharing it. I love the following lines:

    Turquoise Caribbean waters
    Lull ships that pass by

    Thanks fior the update on the anthology. I eagerly await the opening.

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  6. That’s a beautiful photo of the Mermaid’s Chair. It makes me think of “Siren Song” by Margaret Atwood. Do you know it? Congrats on the anthology! Anthologies are a lot of work, but so rewarding.

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    1. I might have scanned Siren Song by Atwood when I looked up the lore of Mermaids. There was a place on our European River Cruise that talks about a siren luring sailors to their death. I’ll have to work on a piece about that, too. It’s fascinating. That’s for recognizing that the anthology is work! It is but I’ve loved doing it – so it doesn’t seem like “work.” Know what I mean?

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