Much to my delight, my verse appears in the latest online edition of The Tusculum Review, where I have the pleasure and honor to number among their featured artists.

Stop on by and take a gander, and be sure to give the site a good, long browse.

This weekend promises to be leisurely and liminal, as it represents (for me, at least) that last great breath before the dive down to semester’s end.  In front of me I have the second half of Johnson’s Rasselas, Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, and a few award-winning bits of short fiction.  On the horizon I can also see those mountains of grading rising up, but they’re a ways off yet.   My exams will wrap May 7th, and then summer comes, right on schedule.

As finishes go, this one has been exceedingly sweet.  Early in the week I learned that my proposal for a Summer Faculty Scholars grant had been accepted.  That means I’ll get to spend most of the season working on verse to finalize a collection, and the university will sponsor the material outlay and the entry fees for a number of first-book contests.  Yesterday, between a grievance hearing and a department meeting, I knocked out the last of the semester’s committee obligations as well.   There’s still a little cooking left to do, but it can be done in my idle time.  Finally, last night I got the chance to head out to dinner with the members of Sigma Tau Delta and some of my favorite folks in the English department; niftier still, STD accorded me the Chip Off the Old Block Distinguished Faculty Award, a delightful surprise.  Teaching is something of a rudderless profession, but feeling that I’m doing right by some of our brightest and shiniest makes for a mighty fine star to steer by.

Today, if I manage things well, should involve nothing but even breathing.  I promised one of my Honors advisees that I’d go over her project proposal with a fine-toothed comb, but most of my plans for the coming week are otherwise already scripted.  Maybe I’ll do a little advance work for finals.  Maybe I’ll pay an extra visit to the gym.  Maybe I’ll call a few friends or send a few letters.

Or maybe I’ll just get outside and enjoy this gorgeous day.

Today is dedicated to idleness, so rather than posting something profound and substantive and narcissistic I’ve simply updated my links.  I cannot express how proud and giddy I am to appear in the pages of these fantastic  journals, and I want to extend again my thanks to the editors and readers for their kindness and consideration. 

In a doubly nifty note, I was informed just yesterday that I’ll be numbered among the featured artists in the online edition of The Tusculum Review some time early in the New Year.   You’ll have the chance to read my poem, “Notes from the Oncology Ward,” and see my adorable mug.

I’ll be blogging sporadically in the coming weeks, so best wishes to you all for a jolly and jaunty holiday season!  May Santa turn a blind eye to that kwazy thing you do!

In theory I should be writing an article about Charlotte Smith; in theory I should be offering academic job hunters recommendations for rejiggering their CVs; in theory I should be finishing up a short story I’m preparing for the Realms of Fantasy 2009 Halloween issue.

Instead I have been shackled to the keyboard, performing the merriest of chores:  writing and mailing withdrawal notices to publishers of poetry.

Since Halloween, for reasons I will have to analyze at a later date, seven of my poems have been accepted for publication and sent to happy homes.  To double up on the happy, all seven of the poems are the products of recent revision, my late-summer attempt to refashion the sound and sense of verse I felt could be executed more perfectly.  At the time it felt like an enormously risky enterprise, as it obliged me to get out of my own way and concede to the aesthetic impulses that drive my style and sensibilities.  Let’s hope I can remember how to do that when next I revisit the drawing board.

My apologies to all those editors who’ve had to put up with the barrage of withdrawals, and my thanks to those who’ve offered me kind words and encouragement in the past several days.  I don’t think my November could get off to a much better start.

But I might buy a lottery ticket, just in case.

Were this a just world, this post would be accompanied by a jpg of Gary Gnu of The Great Space Coaster fame.  However, when one searches for images of said gnewsman, one finds instead images of…

1. Lieutenant Worf
2. a Super Bee-Havior Award Certificate
3. Apolo Ohno
4. Big Bird rollin’ in a hoopty
5. H.R. Pufnstuf
6. Gary Coleman
7. Women in their knickers
8. lolcats

Predictably, I forgot what I was doing.  Allow me to start again.

About a week ago I entered a flash fiction contest.  It struck me as a nifty premise:  the editor of Shroud magazine had been hiking Mount Teneriffe in Washington when he stumbled across a sealed well in the middle of nowhere, and he solicited very short stories inspired thereby.  I was a bit ahead of my summer schedule, and I’ve been hankering for a reason to attempt flash fiction; ergo, I gave in to the urge.  As it turns out, this decision would put me about a week behind in my official plans.  I had hoped to complete three stories during the six-week session, and the second story (if one excludes the flash fiction piece, which I must, as I am a fascist) remains woefully underdeveloped.  “The Way of All Wishes,” however, was great fun to write, and the final product made me happy.  As Matthew Arnold would tell you in so many words, that is the only true standard for art.

Though I think I’ve mentioned the matter in my Myspace blog, closed forms and word limits tend to get the best out of me.  I am prone to prolixity, and knowing that I only have fourteen lines or 500 words to work with obliges me to prune my habitual excesses.  Getting the story to make weight took quite a bit of effort–it went through several revisions in a very short stretch, as I trimmed out backstory and worked toward clarifying the implications I wanted to emerge at the end–but the final product (to my thinking, at least) accomplished what I hoped it would.  I knew the odds were long, but I was nevertheless satisfied.  Though it was tailored for a specific purpose, I thought I might even try it elsewhere were it not to the editor’s liking. 

In jaunty, delightful, encouraging news, however, I won!  The story will appear in Shroud #3.  As a result, I’m now considering the applications of flash fiction much more actively.  I have several projects that might be better served by condensation, and I’d like to revisit some of my older work.  I won’t call those early pieces ”failures” per se, but I think the execution could have been much more accomplished.  They tended to sprawl, to get out of hand, to overrun my intentions.

I’m curious to see if fitting them to fill smaller vessels might be the cure for what ails them.  The same may hold true for some of my earliest poems as well–I think it’s high time I paid them a visit.