Tacking--

--my first rejection slip of this year onto my bulletin board above the PC, where I'll see it daily at the office and remember that everyone does not share my high opinion of my work. First rejection slip, you ask? Yes, but not because I've been blessed with acceptances; this is the first clutch of poems I sent out in oh six. Looked them over last night and I still believe in them. Sending them out again today.

I'm rusty at this. Tried coasting for a while on the good news of the last chapbook, but I didn't work very hard on trying to get readings because the cover--well, I've talked about this before. This is not a whine. I showed the chap to a friend recently (because she asked) and her reading was dead-on: a group of not-quite-narratives that slowly give up the central subject, she said. And that the overwhelming word in her mind after reading them was dread. And I thought: okay, I am on the right track with this manuscript.

Tom-Tom has two blossoms, but I can't quite figure out where the pollen should be coming from (lacking office bees, I plan to use an artist's brush to pollinate them). Do tomatoes have separate male and female flowers? These look to me like big ovaries. Must read up on this.

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This week's daily poems:

• Jill Rosser, "Patience Is a Virtue" (Misery Prefigured)
• Mark Levine, "Work Song" (Debt)
• Adrienne Rich, "Dedications" (An Atlas of the Difficult World)
• Jason Schneiderman, "The Unnaming" (Sublimation Point)
• Eduardo Corral, "Border Triptych" (The Border Triptych)

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Back to grading--