Let's Speak The Same Language

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

BEATNICKING ALONG THE BEAT ROAD

Thirty stories now completed. Have been working today on my ms You Wake One Morning, Remembering. Rearranging the contents. I want to enter it into contests. Nearly 50 poems based on my dance with prostate cancer—it's discovery, treatment with radiation and hormone therapy and semi-recovery. The cancer's still there. Much reduced. My urologist says I'll die of something other than prostate cancer. Only time will tell. He's the one who likes to say, "Everyone's got to die someday."

Lately my rejections have been accompanied by requests to resubmit. Either editors are becoming kinder with their rejection letters, or I'm getting closer. I'm reading Hemingway's short stories recently, having finished Raymond Carver's. It's been a half year since a poem of mine was included in Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro's project, Washington Poetry Map. It's there near Huckleberry Mountain just north of Interstate 90. My record is pretty consistent—one or two publications a year. Nothing spectacular. Not bad for a writer who is a stranger to most, if not all, editors of literary magazines, internet as well as hard copy.

The recent photo reveals the fact I'm letting my hair grow long on the top. On top that is.

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