When he didn't secure a teaching assistant position he was forced to drop out and applied to the Radcliffe Publishing Seminar, attending in the summer of 1978. During his time at Houghton Mifflin, Kessenich recruited W. P. Kinsella author of "Shoeless Joe," Rick Boyer author of "Billingsgate Shoal", a mystery that won an Edgar Award for best mystery novel of the year, David Payne, author of "Confessions of Taoist on Wall Street", and Dianne Middlebrook editor of "Selected Poems of Anne Sexton."

Kessenich was the editor for Terry McMillan's first book "Mama," as well. I spoke with him on my Somerville Community Access TV Show: " Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."

Doug Holder: After you graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1974, you told me you "meandered" throughout your twenties. What did you do? Is meandering a good thing?

Lawrence Kessenich: It was good for me. At the end of college I was interested in the theatre. I started doing amateur theatre. I basically spent my twenties applying to graduate schools. I was accepted into a theatre program, but at the last minute decided it wasn't for me. I was starting to write a lot at that point. I put together some short stories that I had written, and applied to 5 or 6 programs. I didn't get into any of them. At that time I started writing more poetry and so the next time I applied, I applied in poetry. I got into three different programs and chose the one at UMass-Amherst. I have always been attracted to Massachusetts. They had a very good program at UMass.

DH: How did you support yourself in your twenties?

LK: I had all sorts of odd jobs. I worked in a hospital and assisted in autopsies-that was an interesting experience. I worked at an art supply store, a U Haul dealership.

DH: You attended the Radcliffe Publishing Course in the 70s. Was it sort of like a boot camp for getting into the publishing industry?

LK: That's a pretty good description. It's six weeks and it is very intense. I went 25 years ago, I think it has been around for sixty years now. They bring in a lot of people from the publishing business, it is just not theoretical. I eventually got the job at Houghton Mifflin from someone I met at the course.

DH: But you originally wanted to be a writer and now you found yourself on the road to being an editor.

LK: I sort of had an epiphany when I left UMass. I thought maybe I was more suited to be the helper than the person who actually creates the stuff. It turned out I was pretty good at it…it was a good role for me. But eventually I did want to become a writer myself. I did a little, but it is hard when you are an editor. There are only a handful of people who do it.

DH: You say you had to "acquire" novels in order to get ahead. How does one go about doing that?

LK: Well, for novels or nonfiction-you basically read articles. When you are starting out agents won't talk to you. So you talk to other people, read literary magazines, the smaller magazines, where the authors aren't necessarily well known. There is a magazine in the publishing trade called: "Publisher's Weekly." I discovered the author W.P. Kinsella who wrote "Shoeless Joe" there. The reviews appear in PW before the book is even out. So I happened to read this review of a Canadian anthology of short stories. There was a one sentence description of Kinsella's story: "An Iowa farmer builds a playing field in his cornfield in order to invoke his baseball hero Shoeless Joe Jackson." It sounded wonderful. I'm from the Midwest, and I like sports. I was young and naïve and I didn't know much about publishing. I figured that fourteen editors would write to him as soon as they saw it. So I decided I was going to write him right away. I asked him if he ever had written a novel. Nobody wants to start with short stories. It happens once in a while but it's rare.

DH: You worked with Diane Middlebrook on the "Selected Poems of Anne Sexton." What role did you play-did you select any of the poems?

LK: No. I wish I could of because she was one of my favorite poets. I was there as a representative in the publishing house. I made sure that when the manuscript was turned in they did the right things with it: like cover design, inside design, and I was the intermediary between anyone else they had to deal with.

DH: In an interview with Lois Ames, Sexton's and Sylvia Plath's social worker, and author of the intro to Plath's "Bell Jar," Ames told me she tried to write a biography of Plath but ran into a lot of trouble with the family. Did this happen to Middlebrook?

LK: It took years for Diane to write "Anne Sexton: A Biography." But during that time she called me up and said: "You are never going to believe what I have— the tapes of Sexton's sessions with her therapist." "Well" I said. "This will guarantee that the book will be controversial if nothing else." And it certainly was and the family was very upset. This fact didn't come out until the book was published.

SINATRA

* For the Honorable Thomas M. Menino

Mayor of Boston

in the late hours

of Saturday night

at the end

of the week

in every corner

of my room

Frankie has

a song for me

in the low

breaking dawn

the endless

Fifth Avenue

of my memory

the voi
ce

is Sinatra

he is a song

that follows me

through the lonely

city nights

and smoke-

filled bars

of drink after

drink and lighting

up letting

the smoke rise

into the air

drop a nickel

in the machine

Frankie has

a song for you

–Sam Cornish * From "An Apron Full of Beans"