Yesterday was a busy work day: I was editing manuscripts or talking about poems from 7:30 in the morning till 8:30 at night, with a few breaks for meals and a walk and chats with my family. Today will be a bit less rigorous, at least zoom- and verse-wise. I do have a yoga class, but I won't have to wear my glasses or stare at anything during the session. Zoom meetings can be very tiring for bad eyes.

The forecast this week suggests that maybe, just maybe, we won't get any snow in the near future. It's still not exactly balmy, but mid-50s are way better than mid-30s. I've got scant salad greens now, and a few herbs, and baby radishes. A little warmth would do wonders.

I received a rejection letter yesterday, for a poem that is worth publishing. That sounds like hubris, but sometimes I just know: yes, this is a good piece. (Of course sometimes I also have no idea.) It's irritating to feel dependent on the yes-no magic wands of people (grad students? unpaid readers? actual editors? who knows?) who don't seem to be paying attention. On the other hand, I'm not very irritated. I've got two finished manuscripts and a sheaf of unpublished poems that are apparently going nowhere; and maybe it's the times, but I just can't seem to get upset about that. Why should my poems matter more than anyone else's? Isn't it enough to know that they matter to me? Or am I losing heart and not admitting it?

I'm going to write more about this sensation for my friend Teresa's weekly poetry letter. During our conversation yesterday, we discovered we're going through similar versions of detachment from publication. We still keep writing, as we still keeping breathing; our relation to words is kind of like our relation to air molecules. But the public urge? For both of us, that's become ambiguous.