In 2019, I asked my Patreon supporters to send me their “hopes and fears” so I could write poems in response to them. I wanted to see if I might find some new insights inside other people’s lives, and to offer whatever encouragement a poem can carry.

The idea wasn’t to “solve” anyone’s problems. I would never presume to provide “answers” to other people’s complex struggles like some silly poet guru—I am just some guy. All I wanted to do is find some glimmer of hope to point to, maybe a new perspective, or at the very least an acknowledgement of how goddamn hard it all is.

As a writing prompt, this was potent stuff for me. It pushed me down unexpected pathways and into corners of experience far removed from mine. But I was also surprised at the amount of overlap, how many of these anonymous confessions matched up with my own life. I feel like that mixing and merging created a special kind of alchemy that’s unique in my writing so far. So I decided to publish it.

HOPES AND FEARS is a collection of 26 anonymous confessions and 26 poems in response. You’ll recognize some of them from social media posts, but half of them are new and unseen. They probe a wide range of concerns—loss, love, friendship, work, insomnia, anxiety, depression—and draw inspiration from a wide range of sources—animals, babies, weather patterns, outer space, and psychedelic experience. And I illustrated each poem with a weird little drawing!

I’m very much a poetry outsider. I’m unschooled, minimally practiced, flowing on pure instinct—basically I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, I just write words that sound good to me. These poems in particular are intended to be accessible, not arcane, with a conversational style that requires no special knowledge to decode. There was no way a legitimate poetry publisher was going to touch this. So once again I’m going rogue.

You can buy HOPES AND FEARS right now. You can get the paperback or ebook from Barnes & Noble or Amazon. The ebook is also on Apple. Unlike that time I tried to publish The Living on my own website, this should be easy. Click button. Receive book.

I hope you find some encouragement in these poems, or some solace in being seen, or at the very least a little beauty of sound and image. If you do, I hope you’ll share it with your friends. I priced the book on the low end because this is less about the money and more about the sharing. My collaborators may be anonymous, but this still feels communal. To the contributors and the readers: thank you, and whew…good luck to us.

Your friend,

Isaac

P.S I’ve posted about this elsewhere, but THE OVERNOISE is currently out to market and I’m just waiting to hear back from publishers. Cross your fingers with me…