First of all, thanks to all of you who left wonderful responses to my last blog post – funny, encouraging, thought-provoking. I should always post about rejection and depression – I get such good insights! I injured my back last week right after the post, and had to be away from the computer, basically flat in bed doing nothing. Ironically, this made me feel much better and more productive.

For those of you interested in Kate Greenstreet’s series of interviews – here’s a switch – Kate is on the other end of the interview table in this! (PDF file: http://www.saintelizabethstreet.org/iss5/greenstreet_intrvw.pdf)

Chapbook Mini-Review

Lana Ayer’s chapbook, Love is a Weed, from Finishing Line Press.

Lana exhibits both wit and passion in this collection, which has poems that imagine Dorothy touring Italy after her return to Kansas, Atlas’ wife controlling the weather, Violet after George Bailey commits suicide in an alternate “Wonderful Life” reality. In between myth and fairy tale are poems of a couple’s travel from first love to affair to breakup, and all the stops in between. Lana is at her best when her dry sense of humor and turn of phrase work together, as in “Dorothy Does Italy:” “Jolted from her reverie by a timid waiter with tinder-blue eyes,/ she nods yes for another espresso and wonders if tonight’s the night/ her ruby dancing shoes will raise one hell of a memorable gale.”

I sent out two submissions which took what seemed like superheroine strength, to Swink and Alaska Quarterly. Now I am going to shape up and print up my second book manuscript for another round of submissions.

Here’s a link to Rebecca Loudon’s Sylvia Plath party!

And again, no pressure, dear readers, but there’s a free copy of my book hanging around with Galatea Resurrects and it’s waiting for a reviewer… http://grarchives.blogspot.com/2007/08/available-for-review.html