May

May has been a good month, in general and literary-wise.  I finally launched the belated 10th issue of Melusine, which you can see here. It has been a long haul with this issue, but I'm really happy with it.

And earlier, a poem of mine appeared in Ghost Ocean Magazine's 12th issue.  

Writing is still happening.  Poems are still flowing.  Other people's exciting work is still being edited.  Yay for that.

And my daughter is still kind of darn cute, if I may say so.  Cute is as cute does, and she does cute, too.  She has a sweet but fearless little personality.  When she smiles with her four little teeth (and two more on the way) I can barely stand it.  She is also a budding artist, again from a very biased opinion, but I couldn't resist featuring her first two efforts (with help from daddy) in my Melusine editorial here.

What I've Been Doing Lately

1. Taking care of the baby.
2. Taking care of the baby and going a little stir-crazy, although still crazy about the baby... It will get easier in the spring, or so I'm telling myself.
3. Had a poem accepted for the next issue of Ghost Ocean Magazine, which was awesome news.
4. Wrote two poems today, which, believe me, is not normal for the past six months.  But I've written five poems since the baby was born, which is more than I expected to write.
5. Considering submitting to a chapbook contest -- kind of last-minute, as I wasn't sure I had enough poems for a second chapbook and was just going to focus on the full-length manuscript, but I think I actually might, so why not?
6. Working on the Spring, formerly Winter, formerly Fall/Winter issue of Melusine, which is now slated for [redacted rather than revised due to a bad track record in predicting launch dates ;]  But the issue is coming along, little by little...

Last Year's Resolution

Well, finally I kept them all, 100 percent of 'em.  OK, there was only one, and I kept it.  Boy, did I ever.

Resolution '12

Although, honestly speaking, I only kept it in some senses.  I didn't completely change everything.  One of the less welcome side effects of parenthood is that it seems to shine a harsher light on all one's hidden and not-so-hidden flaws, as if one's self-esteem was particularly high to begin with.  I sometimes wonder how I ever fooled myself into thinking I was ever competent at anything.  So needless to say, I have been writing and submitting less lately.  Mostly that's about finding the time, though.

So there are a boatload of things I could resolve about this year; it's difficult to pick just one.  There seem to be two categories:  things I suck at (which is a mammoth category) and things I am OK/fairly good at.  So I'd like to shorten the first list a bit but also put more work into the stuff in the latter one, because frankly I'll never be a Renaissance woman, and I need to choose where to put my energy.  The exception there would be trying to reach out to people more and contribute more despite inhibition/social anxiety/tendency to be bad at articulating nonwritten language/sheer laziness.  That's always on the list, but it's the one thing that's always worth continuing to work at, no matter how little progress I seem to make.

On that soberly prudent note, happy new year.

For the Holidays

It occurred to me why images of the Madonna and Child are so moving, even to me as a nontheist.  After aeons of hot and cold stars and crashing meteors, in at least one place in the universe life gave rise to mammals, with their chemical capacity to bond, and then to self-conscious mammals whose look of recognition implies their shared awareness of that moment of mutual animal trust, which is kind of beautiful. 

So merry Christmas, after all.

Poem

I wrote one today after all.  Well, yay for encouragement from fellow poets and babies who are kind enough to sleep an extra 15 minutes or so...

Publication and Baby Updates

So it's been a hectic three months since my last post about appearing in an upcoming anthology and expecting my first child in a matter of days.

To our delight, the child did appear in a matter of days, healthy and happy (or as happy as a newborn can be, I guess), and pretty darn cute, if I may say so from my biased vantage point, and now the anthology is out as well, and it's lovely.  I just received my copy yesterday.  There is an Amazon link on the press's website, if you're interested in purchasing it.

Reckless Writing:  The Modernization of Poetry by Emerging Writers of the 21st Century by Chatter House Press, edited by Penny Dunning

So now I'll get back to all the things I need to cram into the few hours when baby is sleeping and mommy is not yet about to crash as well from exhaustion.  Some days those things just include the essentials.  I mean, the bare, bare essentials.  Cleaning the house is pretty much a luxury, but then I never was much of a house-cleaner on a good day.  I'm not sure how I'm going to find the time to go back to work, even part-time, but I guess I'll figure that out in a month or so.  I'm working on imposing some sort of schedule on our days so that maybe I can get a bit more done.  There are so many projects on my calendar, like starting work on the new issue of Melusine, book ideas, website ideas, that keep getting kicked like the proverbial can down the road.  I have to admit I can't even imagine the luxury of sitting down to write a new poem yet, although I'm sort of hoping one will come to me one day despite myself, as poems sometimes do, happily for the lazy among us.  But at least I've begun to send out my full-length manuscript.

For someone prone to the winter blues even in easier years, though, I have to say I'm finding life relatively good, all in all, this chilly November.  The child is a handful, but she's also pretty awesome.

Poems Accepted for New Anthology

I just learned that four of my poems were accepted for the Reckless Writing anthology.  I'm not sure if that means they seem to have been written recklessly or with reckless abandon (well, either way, it's probably a good thing for me, if I've been found erring on the side of caution and hermeticism in the past.)

In other news, baby is swiftly on her way into our world.  This time next week, I will probably not be sitting at this computer, although I will no doubt have some kind of electronic device connected to the Internet close at hand, maybe even this laptop, although both I and the laptop will probably be found in a more babycentric location.  Seriously, though, I'm excited.  It takes a long time to grow a baby, but for the most part, it's been a fascinating ride.  But now my back hurts when I sit to type, and so I'm about ready for the next phase to begin, as crazy as it no doubt will be, and also no doubt fascinating.