[Tim Murphy]

Sorry for not posting for so long. Some major milestones around here in Fargo. I have finished the ninth and tenth individual collections this year, starting in January when I turned sixty-five. The collections surpassed the 885 pages of Thomas Hardy's Collected last week, when I finished Fall Ploughing.

When hunting opened, September 1, I started an immense ode, Four Odes to Autumn. It came to 270 lines, so much for the old accusation that Tim is a miniaturist! Intimations is 215 and Lycidas, 195 lines, but who's counting?. That's how I caught up with Hardy, it's fifteen pages long. The other morning Keats' twittering swallows were dive bombing my dove decoys.

It is going to take my new publisher, North Dakota State University Press, years to get all these forthcoming books in print, but my doctor, a genius in internal medicine who saved my life nine years ago, tells me the cigarettes and whiskey will kill me at 95.

I'm starting to get acceptances for the poems I resumed sending out this year, good ones, Hudson Review, Quadrant, First Things, Commonweal.

Good writing to all of you, Tim

[Gail White]

And Hardy couldn't have shot a buzzard. Great work, Tim.

[Catherine Chandler]

Sphereans, if you thought Hunter's Log I was wonderful, just wait until you read its sequel. Congratulations, Tim!

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Tim Murphy

My doctor, a genius in internal medicine who saved my life nine years ago, tells me the cigarettes and whiskey will kill me at 95.

Dammit, Tim, I do hope not. I've been banking on raising a glass of whisky in my shaky hand and puffing cigarette smoke in the Queen's face when she congratulates me on my 100th birthday.

[Tim Murphy]

Thanks Gail and Brian. And thanks to Cathy for bringing up what I regard as an ancillary book, i.e., not one of the original collections. My big hunting buddy, Steve Syrdal whom some of you know well from Hunter's Log, asked if I had enough for a second volume. Thanks to the monster Odes to Autumn (I wrote another one, 64 lines today) it is thirteen pages longer than volume one. The great Eldridge Hardie, who swore off illustrating books after HL I, is willing to do this one. Eldridge does not buy growth stocks, and I want him to do this while his eye and hand are still perfect. And of course Devotions, a big book, 159 pages, comes out in January. Like the Hunter's Logs, it is a Selected Poems on a unified theme, my first from NDSU Press. I also have Wilderness Camp, 70 pages on Scouting. So when NDSU gets through all these mss. in five years or so, I'll have seventeen books in print. Never would have believed that possible.

[John Whitworth]

Congratulations, Tim. I've given up fags (cigarettes to you) but I emphatically have not given up beer and wine and gin and, occasionally, Scotch Whisky (but only when it's the best single malt natch) Irish is OK. .Never tasted Bourbon. Have I missed something?

[Tim Murphy]

John, I have two bottles in my desk drawer, the Balvenie and George Dickel. I drink the Dickel.

Another Breakfast

I slip a spear of Gedney's garlic pickle
into a brimming grail of golden Dickel.