Last week I submitted poems to journals for the first time in months, and this morning I woke up to discover that one of them has just been published. Instant gratification! It's part of a new project I'm working on, temporarily called Famous Works of Literature, which borrows other people's titles and uses them out of context. This poem, for instance, is titled "Piers Plowman" but is not a retelling of Langland's original.

Though I do procrastinate on submitting work to journals, I'm pleased to watch a new piece float into the world now and again. But I'm certainly not producing finished poems speedily. Nor do I know if this infant project will ever become a coherent collection. Possibly, these poems will morph into some other unity, maybe under entirely different titles. I'm not worrying about it; really, I'm enjoying the indefinite nature, enjoying not being in a rush. Between my last published book and the next one, to be released this fall, there will be only a two-year gap in copyright date. When I stand back and consider this, I recognize how crazily I've been writing and revising during the past few years; I see the obsessive pressure I've been putting on myself to create and refine. So taking a breather (of sorts) is not a bad thing. Of course, the parenthetical "of sorts" acknowledges the ironic nature of my kind of breather. I'm still ridiculously busy--with teaching, with reading, with editing, with home responsibilities--but at least I'm allowing myself to readjust my writing production and I'm not beating myself up for laziness.

Tomorrow I'll embark on my adventure--catching a morning bus from Portland to Boston, catching a noon train from Boston to Chicago. I've still got many loose ends to untangle--concocting my picnic meals, writing to-do lists for T, dealing with last-minute laundry, digging my tickets out of emails, plus fiddling around with my usual desk and yard chores. It will be a cool day, with rain--a day to drink hot tea and concentrate on the details. Also a day to be happy about my poem.