Starry starry blog

For some reason I've gotten just a whole ton of blog visitors coming in directly to the post previous to this one, though Sitemeter isn't showing me any search terms for these visits -- like the post has been making the rounds of email or something. It's not exactly the most interesting post I have ever made or anything. It is a puzzlement.

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The Poetry Foundation is looking for an Associate Editor.

And Three Candles Press is looking for book-length manuscripts by women.

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I finally moved to the new version of Blogger. Like anybody cares.

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The new issue of Pleiades arrived today and it looks to be just chock-full of good stuff.

What's a "chock" anyway?

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In the past ten days I've actually done far more revising than first-drafting. This is new for me, and incredibly welcome (and incredibly needed). I only wish I were better with titles.

Sometimes when I'm stuck on a poem I'll go to Wikipedia and look up something related to the general topic or major image/metaphor in the poem, whether that is radio astronomy, transgender issues, navigation at sea, or the visible spectrum. Or I'll go to the Encyclopedia Britannica online, or just to Google (either Google Scholar or plain vanilla Google). I'm not necessarily looking for information per se; what I usually want to do is to steal some language (and to learn enough about the specialized vocabulary to be sure I'm not using that language incorrectly). It's fun and often helpful. It can also chew up a whole lot of time and turn into the most amazing procrastination device.

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I like asterisks.

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Note to self: the week one has to finalize a grant application is not the best time to have a crisis of confidence in one's work. Just sayin'.