In the Muddle of the Night

We set out to make a chapbook together because so many of our poems touch on similar themes. Some were written for the same prompts, for the same publications, at the same time. Some were written as a response to each other's poems. For a while, we were exchanging prompts that we both would work on. Since we're both very undisciplined, for otherwise very disciplined-and sometimes driven-sorts of people, that endeavor soon fell apart. At some point, despite any indolence, we decided to put the poems we had written together into a chapbook. The first section of the books consists of poems that were intentionally written for or in response to the same prompts--for contests, publications, or just as another way for us to communicate with each other. We call this portion, Shared Prompts-Poems by Intention. The second section has poems in it that we paired because they seemed to have thematic overlap. This part of the book is called Stumbling into Furniture, which is what might happen to anyone in the muddle of the night. For those readers who don't care how or why these were written, we've provided a thematic "key word or phrase" in the Table of Contents to help you find your way. Though making this book has been easier to talk about than to do-we both have very busy lives, though you'd never know it from looking at Alan napping most afternoons, or watching the care with which Betsy collects the fur shed by her menagerie from the corners of her home-we've finally managed to put In the Muddle of the Night together. These poems represent Betsy, and Alan, and a long-distance sort of "us." We're proud of this little book.