Yes, yes, yes, I am still alive. Merely I have been driving and driving and talking and driving and eating and driving and washing dishes and driving. But finally I am alone in my house and back at my desk.

When I got home last night, I discovered that yet another journal, Hawk and Handsaw, had accepted every single western Pennsylvania poem I'd submitted. Moreover, the editor asked for more. I can't tell you how pleased I am to see that these poems do, in fact, seem to make sense to their readers. The style and approach are so new to me, and I've also been suffering under a sense of imminent divorce . . . which is to say that I've had to consciously force myself not to work on the series because of looming editorial and anthology deadlines. With poems, as with love affairs, "too busy" can lead to "never again." So knowing that two journals plan to take a total of eight or ten Chestnut Ridge poems is heartening.

Now, however, I ought to be addressing those looming editorial and anthology deadlines.