"Catch and Release" Published in The Fourth River

My essay, "Catch and Release," was just published in Issue 5 of The Fourth River. The issue's TOC isn't up on the magazine's web site yet (I'll update the link when it is), but my author copies arrived on Saturday. This was my first acceptance and it's a piece I finished up about four years ago, so it's a thrill to see it in print—and a relief to see that the footnotes aren't all in italics the way they were in the page proofs.

Poetry Slam

I've started writing poetry. Don't ask.

I showed one of my first efforts to Ben, who sees everything before my writing group.

"It's good," he said.

"Really? It's, like, my first poem. Good? Really?"

"Yeah, it's good."

I basked in his praise for a few hours before I thought to ask a follow-up question.

"What, exactly, was good about it?"

"Your poem? I understood it."

"You understood it."

"Yeah, you know, some poems you can't understand. I was able to read yours."

"So your standard for 'good' in poetry is (a) written in the English language and (b) intelligible?"

"It makes me sound like a philistine when you put it that way."

I stopped basking and got back to work.

New Design

I spent today switching blog templates. I liked the old one, but this one lets me get a lot more in the way of lists and other stuff into the sidebar in a space-efficient manner, so I'm going with it. I'll probably continue to tweak it for a while longer—comments and suggestions welcome!

The photo in the header is actually of the tree behind our house. I took pictures with our digital camera, imported them into iPhoto, cropped one to fit the new design, punched up the color a smidgen (OK, three smidgens), and voilà! I do love my Mac.