Ugh. So I had that radio interview last night, but I started coughing in the middle of it; and even though the very pleasant, interested, and easygoing interviewer assured me he could excise it from the recording, I still feel glum because I wanted to do a good job. Oh well. Onward and upward, I guess.

On Saturday I will be judging and reading (without coughing, I hope) for the the Maine Poets Society, which you can read about here. The meeting will be held at the University of Maine at Augusta--room 218 of the Richard Randall Student Technology Center--and begins at 9:30 a.m. I am the morning judge, focusing on persona poems; and the afternoon judge is Tom Carper, focusing on sonnets. I received a huge number of entries for the persona-poem contest, so I'm guessing that plenty of people will attend. Maybe I'll see you there.

In the meantime, I'll be running errands, weeding, taking the dog to the vet, editing a poetry collection, and reading a biography of Andrew Carnegie. These fabulously successful entrepreneurs mystify me. They remind me of fairy-tale magicians: the gold just falls out of their mouths. As someone who's barely able to rub two nickels together, I can only think that money making must be a weird, unexplainable talent akin to poetry writing and baseball hitting. "See the ball. Hit the ball." This is my new favorite all-purpose quotation. Thank you so much, Manny Ramirez.