If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

--Leo Tolstoy

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Fortune Cookie Wisdom

Do not seek so much to find the answer as much as to understand the question better.


Great things are accomplished only by the perfection of minor details.


Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.


Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.


How can you have a beautiful ending without making beautiful mistakes?


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News

I haven’t been posting regularly for quite awhile. Some news updates. The publication of my villanelle “For a Wreath on a Live Oak, Route 22” in Poetry Southeast was supposed to appear in the spring issue. It has now been deferred until the summer issue. For reasons I won’t go into here, I’ll be curious to see if my poem appears in the summer issue.

I received my contributor copies of SLAB a couple of weeks ago. The tercets of my long poem “Drive” with its long lines came out all wrong. It looks like ragged prose on the page. At least one of the editors took the time to include a card apologizing for the errors and assured me that the poem will be in the correct format when it appears online. It will probably be August or early September before the new issue of SLAB appears online.

I recently received an acceptance for my poem “Unacceptable” from Niteblade.

Yesterday I received my contributor copies of The Akros Review that contain my pantoum “Buona Notte.”

I’ve received around a half dozen rejections during the last couple of months. Notable among the rejections was a handwritten note on the rejection slip from Boulevard. They indicated that they liked “Thoor Ballylee” and “When We Met,” but they receive so much great work and can’t find a place for all of it. That’s probably the nicest rejection that I’ve received.

My enthusiasm for poetry has been absent for the past two months. Part of it has to do with how busy my 8 to 5 job has been (which has calmed down now). I think I’m also in one of those fallow periods where I don’t have much to say. I’ve also gotten out of the habit of writing regularly. I’m just now beginning to feel the poetry embers glow again.