I'm not sure what the nature of the unease is. I think I am afraid someone will read the book. And I am afraid that no one will. And I am afraid that someone will ask me what it is about.
There are a lot of bad questions to ask writers such as, "Written anything I would've heard of?" and "Sold many copies?" and "I've got an idea for a book, how about you write it and we'll split the profits?" But "what is it about?" is the hardest to answer.
It feels as though your book is being head-butted. The question goes directly to the writer's fear that they have written a book about nothing. It also makes them feel self-conscious about not being very good at marketing themselves. Finally, it reminds them of their small, secret hope that they have written something so mysterious and so good that it can never be adequately described. Notice that I am using my special writerly technique of describing these feelings in the third person, so that the reader will understand them to be universal feelings rather than just my own personal ones.
There are other secret hopes. The writer hopes that a minor parade will be held when their book is published. One Christmas morning when I was 9 or 10, there was a knock at the door and when I opened it a brass band was standing there. It was the town band. They launched into When the Saints Come Marching In while my family and I stood there in our pyjamas. It was both wonderful and awkward. Something like this would encapsulate the spirit of publishing a book, especially a book of poetry. What I am saying is that there should be a travelling brass band that turns up on a writer's doorstep on the morning of their book's publication.
Apart from that, writers shouldn't expect the world to change when they publish a book. Keeping your expectations low means you will be surprised and glad if something does happen. But most writers I know really do want to be read, want to be deemed special and remarkable. This is hard to admit to; it seems a bit childish, like you haven't given up on your dreams of marrying Andre Agassi.
In some ways, publishing a book is a dream – and, like all dreams, it can take you away from yourself. The hopes and fears that come with publishing a book can distract you from the reasons you write in the first place – reasons which, perhaps, are so mysterious that they can never be adequately described – and from the feeling you get when you write. I love the way the novelist Sigrid Nunez puts it: "How lucky to have discovered that writing books made the miraculous possible, to be removed from the world, and to be a part of the world at the same time."