[Tim Murphy]

I received proof of twelve epigrammatic poems coming out in Chronicles next month under the title Multum in Parvo. So I sent Catharine Brosman their antithesis, a 96 line pentameter monster titled Hard North. The last of the big elegies for the EfH, it describes a trek Alan and I took to Parc Auyuittuk on Baffin Island in 1990. It was workshopped here, where Beaton and Chandler, Canadians both, were particularly helpful. Hard North will be the 50th Murphy poem published by Chronicles since 1997, and they were awfully good to Alan too.

Dappled Things arrived, adorned by Maryann, and me? I'm in it too. The third of my pieces for Capital Journal appears next Wednesday, and I read in Pierre the following night. The subject of this prosimetrum is our Jody Bottum. I'll link it when I get home. Anecdotal Evidence http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.co...never-see.html has published two more pieces on Deborah Warren and me. It is a book blog well worth adding to your favorites page. Finally, A Suicide, just workshopped at TDE, will appear in Able Muse. My thanks to those who helped and of course to Alex.

http://shitcreek.auszine.com/issue15...s-hunters-log/ This will take you to Cathy Chandler's truly amazing essay on Hunter's Log, which intrigues me, because Cathy doesn't hunt. Haling from Central Pennsylvania, though, all her brothers do, so this isn't Cate's first rodeo. Thanks, Cathy, and thanks Paul Stevens.

[Maryann Corbett]

Congratulations on these many poems and successes, Tim.

(This is my first clue that I'm in the Dappled Things--I submitted a long time ago but never heard back from them. (Yet another piece of evidence that my e-mail may be kaflooey!!) Not seeing my poems online, I'll have to query the editors, I guess.

(News flash: further research reveals that the place where Tim and I co-exist is actually Anglican Theological Review. But you can check out Tim's Dappled Things poems online.)

[Catherine Chandler]

Wonderful news, Tim. Congratulations on all counts!

[Andrew Frisardi]

Congratulations on all this. Cathy’s review sold me on the hunting poems. I love the Ortega y Gasset background, which I knew nothing about. Tim, the poem about Maud Gonne is stunning. I already have Mortal Stakes/Faint Thunder but now I want the hunting poems book too.

[Tim Murphy]

Thanks, Andrew. Isn't that a stunning essay, moving effortlessly through the realms of philosophy, theology and ecology, that animate hunting at its highest level? Surely you never thought I was some redneck Nimrod of a meat hunter? (Well, sometimes.)Enjoy the book. Mortal Stakes/Faint Thunder is infinitely more ambitious, but I suspect I shall never write a book I like so well as Hunter's Log.

[Gail White]

Tim can get more religion out of guns and dogs than most of us could get out of a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela.

[Tim Murphy]

Gail, that might be the greatest blurb I ever read.

[Jennifer Reeser]

Gail -- agreed.

[Tim Murphy]

Taking up Gail's theme, here is the hunt as pilgrimmage, a poem Cathy mentioned but didn't have room to quote. Feeney and I probably walk ten times the 100 km required of St. James' pilgrims every fall. Every time I get to "my faithful altar dog" I crack up.

Missing Mass
He hath put a new song in my mouth.
Psalm 40:3

Going to church afield
I bear the Decalogue
as St. Michael, his shield.
My faithful altar dog
precedes me up the aisle,
mile after dusty mile.

A gale sweeps through the choir
and dries the prostrate grass
lightning and prairie fire
forge to beaten brass.
Tinted anew each day,
the dome is blue or gray.

The blood of every bird
I sacrifice this fall
let me translate to Word,
responses to the call
that asks us to record
a new song to the Lord.

[Charlotte Innes]

Originally Posted by Gail White

Tim can get more religion out of guns and dogs than most of us could get out of a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela.

AND poetry! (As well as religion...)

Tim, I absolutely love your "altar dog" poem. It's so beautiful. And congrats on all the recent publications!

Charlotte