Poetry News and a Dream

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and has a great year in 2006!

I received a rejection over the holidays, but one of the editors took the time to write me a brief note saying that I had some great lines in “The Necessity of Color.” She suggested that the poem doesn’t connect the dots among the sections enough. I’m not sure if I agree with that. I told this literary magazine a couple of months ago that the South Dakota Review had accepted “The Necessity of Color, “ so I was hoping this literary magazine would like some of my other submitted work.

I received over the holidays my contributor copies of the South Dakota Review. I hope the other two copies I paid for are on their way. I read some of the poems last night in the SDR. I really liked one poem called “Night Lines,” and there were a couple of others I liked. I remarked to my wife last night that it is a strange sensation to read your own poem in a literary magazine. You get so used to seeing it on the screen of a computer or on 8 ½ by 11 paper. Reading your own poem in a different font on a different color of paper makes the poem seem almost not yours.

One of my parents’ friends that I saw over the holidays is an attorney. He doesn’t know a lot about the publishing world, but he does know about contracts. He gave me some suggestions about getting clarification on the rights SLAB wants for my poem “Drive.” I haven’t heard back from SLAB yet regarding my email requesting clarification. I suspect I won’t hear back from them until early January.

I saw the movie Memoirs of a Geisha yesterday. I enjoyed it very much and recommend it. I’ve always liked Japanese culture.

Early this morning I dreamed that I was adventuring with a group of people in a Chinese necropolis. We had to cross the necropolis to get where we needed to go. I was bringing up the rear in our small band, and the others got ahead of me. Suddenly the ground shook and a hand emerged through the ground. I had this large rake-like weapon attached to my right hand, and I began hacking into the undead person emerging from the ground. I dispatched him, and then the ground shook again. This time a huge corpse face with closed eyes was slowly coming towards the surface. I started hacking into the forehead of the face, but it had little effect. I began to panic. I cried out for help, and one of my companions ran back to where I was. He unsheathed two swords and plunged them simultaneously into the forehead of the face. This did the trick, and the face stopped rising.