I'm feeling drained this morning, writing-wise. I've spent the week poring over Shakespeare's Sonnet 81 and have drafted a dozen pages about possible avenues for reading and responding to it. Simultaneously I've been rereading the essays I'll be focusing on in tomorrow afternoon's workshop. Between times I've been engaged with Rick Mullin's book-length poem, Soutine, which the editors of New Walk have asked me to review. I want to go back to that Marie de France scrap I posted here in February, which I have thoughts of expanding into a larger essay that might also talk about Phillis Wheatley and Jan Kochanowski. I have thoughts of dipping back into the western Pennsylvania poems that have so engaged me this winter. But how will I ever find the space? Spring is coming, which means digging and planting. I'll start working part time as a baker for a new cafe that one of my band members is opening. Next week I venture to Boston, country-mouse fashion, to sign books for Autumn House Press at AWP. Later in the month I teach a workshop for the Maine Council of English Language Arts. I play our first String Field Theory reunion show. April's readings are starting to accrue. The grass will grow, and the Frost Place looms. And meanwhile I apply for jobs and apply for jobs and apply for jobs, and nobody gives me the time of day--not a "we've received your application," not a "thank you for applying," nothing. [I admit that nobody is an exaggeration. Just yesterday I received an actual "thank you for interviewing" for a job that I hadn't interviewed for. It seems that the world of real employment is even more arcane than the world of literary magazines.]