South Dakota Review

Yesterday I received my galley proofs for “The Necessity of Color.” I am pleased that my poem will take up eight pages of space in SDR because that way each of the six sections get to start on their own page. The poem works better that way and is more attractive looking.

I am amused by how anal I am. Today I emailed SDR my changes/corrections to the galley proofs. I quibbled gently over the line break of the epigraph, whether I needed a hyphen in the fifth section, and the spacing between a Roman numeral and a word in the heading of the sixth section.

The Fall 2005 issue of SDR, 43.3 should come out by late November or early December according to the letter accompanying the galley proofs. I didn’t think that I would see the issue until early next year.

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I made some more progress on my sestina this morning. Much of what I wrote today felt like just filling out the requirements of the form with the six repeating words. However, I think I’m getting the narrative arc of the poem working this way. After I finish the remaining two stanzas, I’ll have plenty of time to revise energy and interest back into the poem.

By the way, for the benefit of my precious few blog readers (bless you), “The Necessity of Color” is a free verse poem. I’ve only been experimenting with stricter forms again recently. (Just in case by the remotest chance you were wondering and give a damn, I thought you should know.)