This week, I received the hopeful news that yet another publisher is slightly interested in my rereading manuscript. This poor book is constantly being lost, forgotten, and forsaken . . . and I use all of those words in the most literal way possible. I have never known a manuscript so liable to be misplaced. But for the moment someone, somewhere, seems to know where it is. Most likely the publisher will reject it, but I feel successful in merely managing to keep the book visible in a pile on a desk.

This is the time of year when I clutch at every spiderweb hope because it's the time of year when I expect to be creating new work; and when creation is clumsy, I tend to stab metaphorical knives into my eyes. I'm copying, copying, copying and, yes, the practice is drawing me down into a place where I begin to sense how I need to work and, yes, I did write a poem this week that I sort of like but, yes, in the meantime all I do is wonder why I'm not writing the stuff I thought I would be writing and instead am falling into a completely different pit. And the metaphorical knives glint in their sheaths.