Wow! (Softly)

Trying to get a poetry manuscript ready to submit to the Walt Whitman award, I have amazed myself this morning. I thought I had about sixty of the "best" prize-winning poems arranged in some kind of order. But today I have gone back and read all those Volume One poems, written from the 1950s into the '70s, that hardly ever saw the light of day, and I just absolutely love them. They sound as if they had been written by somebody else, a water sprite or a "perfect little woman" who crawled out from under a rock. But of course, that's just my impression.

So I don't know what to do about it. Maybe just throw them all into the ring? Maybe the book should be in two sections, the old ones and the newer "best" ones.

Also, I'm thinking why bother with competitions any more? Why wait one to two more years to see if it gets published, and then probably be disappointed, and have to start all over? Just get it printed between hard covers, then sit in a corner
like little Jack Horner,
and read it over and over by myself,
and think, "Oh, what a good poet am I!"

*

And here it's almost time for Jeopardy, and I haven't done anything about the Friday night sister supper. Nothing in the house to eat except half a leftover pizza, and old cans of rutabagas, spinach and such. So I guess we'll have to put it off this week.