June

And another three months have passed by ... but this time I have a pretty good excuse.  I welcomed my little boy into the world during a St. Patrick's Day blizzard here in Maryland (not a particularly common occurrence.)  Despite the leonine weather conditions at his debut, he is a little lamb, the sweetest-tempered baby I've ever seen -- although, in stature, he may be leaning somewhat toward the leonine side.  His height and weight measurements were off the charts at his one-month checkup, but after his second-month, he's back to being just a bit tall, which is good enough, I think.  His sister is petite, and if he is aiming to be a giant, it wouldn't be long before people were confused as to which is the older.  At least my brother and I were grown before people started making that mistake.

In poetry news, I just found out the other day that I made the short list for Kore Press's First Book Award.  Since I had already seen the winner and two other finalists announced earlier and thought that was the last I'd heard of it, I was actually rather psyched to see my name on the short list.  Winning is nice, but "almost" is still encouraging.  There isn't always a lot of feedback in the writing world, so this sort of thing is what makes it easier to persevere.  There's another contest deadline coming up, and I'm kind of excited now to polish the thing off, add a few new poems, maybe subtract one or two more, and send it out again.

I also just saw the cover for the issue of the Free State Review where my poem will be appearing this summer ... excited about that, too!

I had been feeling a little discouraged lately about the writing endeavor ... there is never enough time to do as much of it as I'd like now.  I did manage to write a new poem recently, though, and am fairly pleased with it.  I've actually written three since March, which isn't bad, actually.  Not really bad at all.

In the "Nice Problems to Have" Category...

... I had to decline an acceptance for publication of a much earlier version of the chapbook manuscript that will be published by Dancing Girl Press this fall.  As an editor myself, I feel sort of shabby about having to withdraw a manuscript after it was accepted, but I honestly believed that a year was the cutoff time to expect an answer one way or the other, since the maximum advertised wait time had been six months, and it's been over a year and a half.

I also feel shabby for complaining about wait periods, but it can be hard to wait sometimes, especially when it comes to "firsts."  It was the same way while I was waiting for those first few journal publications, and this will be my first print chapbook.  But sometimes with my own journal, I end up making people wait longer than the advertised time, and I feel shabby about that, too.  It happens, and there are generally reasons -- the chief one being time and the lack thereof.  The press in question is one I admire, and I know they are swamped with manuscripts.

But all's well, and I'm proud to be appearing with Dancing Girl Press, which to be honest was my first choice of publisher for this chap, although the version that DGP accepted wasn't the first one I submitted to them, and I have to be honest again and say that I'm really glad that's the case, because the revised lineup I have right now is the first one I feel really 100 percent confident about sending into the world.  I tried to convince myself I felt that way about the previous versions, but it was more like 99 percent and falling with every re-reading.

That doesn't mean I think this iteration is perfect, or that any poem I'll ever write will be perfect, whatever that means, much less a book of 'em, but I feel good about it, and not afraid to see it in print.  Let's be frank one more time:  the thought of seeing one's work in book form for the first time is exciting, but that's a different matter than feeling OK about the work itself.  I feel OK about this work.  (And I'm fighting off with a stick the temptation to add a disclaimer, like "for the moment," durnit.)