Consummatus sum

My Latin, as much as I love it, has suffered a bit of oxidation during the last two years of studying Japanese, so if Consummatus sum does not lead exactly to I am finished, I hope you will not hold it against me.

I finished my first chapbook of poems yesterday, and sent it off, with a check for $15.00, to the Frank O'Hara Chapbook Contest. It is only 16 pages long, but it has taken me forever, plus Tuesday, to go through the manuscript line by line, syllable by syllable, image by image and edit everything so A is tied to B, and C, and D, for more than just alphabetical reasons. There is nothing drearier than writing sometimes. I will not even begin to discuss my whimsical way of spelling, some of which has probably seeped through into this blog.

It is the first time in a long time I have sent anything out for publication--at least since I had a few poems printed in this book, in 2004. Most of the poems here are really quite wonderful, and I have no idea why any of mine were eventually selected for inclusion. They are hardly Minshara Class, in terms of Life.

...

So, today, it is back to work. Back to the Moon, the Stars, Comets, and Mars. Back to blogging. Back to being librarial. Back to reading the news. I understand it isn't good. It hardly ever is.