The Good, the Bad, and the Undecided

The Good: In spite of having a lot of pain, Sister Susan hosted a great Fourth Of July family celebration at the Yellow House, Thursday afternoon. Jesse and Jed and we three "weird sisters" gathered around a very festive table. Angela and India didn't show; neither did Buffy and her bunch. We're going to have to talk to those girls.

The Dog-In-the-Manger Dept.: In 2012, I won six poetry awards at the Alabama Writers Conclave in Fairhope, Alabama, including a first, a second, and two third prizes. But on their website list of the 2012 winners, they only show me as a winner of one honorable mention. Makes you wonder what's the use.

Furthermore, the poem I entered in the 2013 Alabama State Poetry Society contest didn't win anything, which gripes my innards.

To Go Or Not To Go: Ms. Sue W. of Negative Capability Press in Mobile, Alabama, has offered to look at some of my poems with a view to publishing a book of them. She said if I attend the AWC meeting in Fairhope next week, we'll talk about it, but if I don't go, I can send her "ten or twelve" poems in August. Jed has generously offered to drive us down there Friday, but I can't decide whether or no.

Thinking of the recent poetry books Neg. Cap. has published for Joe and Barry and others, I wonder if a book of my "ten or twelve" little cockeyed poems would even be noticed.

If I had a desk with a drawer that locked, I think I would just lock all five or six hundred of them in the drawer, a la Emily Dickinson, and eventually die unpublished. And if posterity didn't find them, it's their loss.

Anyway, we'll probably go to Fairhope.