REJECTIONS I CAN ALMOST LOVE

What can I say? So close, yet so far. A story published last month, two poems forthcoming soon and this near miss, rejected with high praise. I knew as I wrote these recent tales they are fair to good. This one caught the eye of the very respected Fiddlehead magazine. All this happening as the battle with my prostate cancer moves from my urologist to an oncologist, a sign the disease is worsening. The visit with the oncologist, though, left me with hope for several more good and useful writing years. 

I want to visit Wales this year or next, the home of my ancestors and Dylan Thomas whose work I once upon a time could not get enough of. Those were also my drinking years. 

What a conundrum. I'm hesitant to submit something else to Fiddlehead that might spoil their good opinion of my skills. Ain't that a dandy form of writer's block?

 
 

GRIM REAPER BRINGS GIFTS

Just discovered the College of Charleston's literary magazine Illuminations has accepted my poem THIRST. It will appear in the June 2021 issue. I now have two poems awaiting publication at the same time. Add those to the short story that just appeared in Kestrel, and I'm having a run of publication longer than at any other time in my life. 

Wouldn't you know that would be how it turns out... a run of success just when the Grim Reaper moves into my cellular basement to take up temporary residency there? This morning I was moved to tears and laughter as I took my morning drive. Death made everything feel more alive this morning, even my Barclay's Choice Privileges credit card seemed more colorful, more vibrant in my hand as I offered it to the barista. On my sunny morning dive, for a second, I looked forward to, embraced the experience of dying, a transcendent moment for certain which quickly passed. Then, thinking about my dearest wife, wanting to convince me to stop eating butter as if that will stop the cancer from spreading. To be loved so by that dearest to me of all humans? Wow! More tears of joy. Then laughter as I listened to KBOO, playing an old hit like Crying by Roy Orbison. Suddenly, young love fell into the absurdist camp, all my pain as a young man, all my divorces and love tangles became comedy of the highest order. Wow, such a surge of emotions the Grim Reaper brings with him!

THE SUN IS DEFINITIVELY OUT, BUT THE WIND....

The sun is blazing today, but a fierce wind blows, making a walk problematical. Got my two free copies of Kestrel in the mail. A very professional journal. I'm trying to read some of the poetry and stories in it other than my own. I have a difficult time reading contemporary work. I do. Seems a writer must be dead and well established in the cannon of literature before I give it the time of day. When I take the time, I find interesting stuff all the time, but time is really short now for me. I'm reading Hemingway and a contemporary Japanese author Haruki Murakami who's been translated into scads of languages. Now I learn his novel Norwegian Wood is not a representative work. Many of his younger readers were disappointed by it. A love story, plain and simple. I understand some of his other novels employ fantastical scenes and imagery.