Great news, Tim. Congratulations on placing all four parts of "Second Step"!

Of all those you've mentioned, my favorite is "In David's House", especially Part V., "One Hundred Three".

Better and better, Tim. Congratulations.

Frank

Wonderful achievements, Tim - a "right happy and copious industry" being superbly rewarded.

Andrew, Adam, Frank, Cathy, David, John, Martin, etc.:

Thank you. I assure you I've never had a month like this in terms of acceptances, but I've never written like I did in the fall of 2009, turning out two years' work in four months. Then too, I think we have to recognize that there's something of a pack mentality even among these uniformly excellent, formal-friendly editors. The more Murphy they see in their competitors' pages or hear on the air waves, the more Murphy they crave. Dana calls this an editorial consensus, and it's taken a long time to achieve. I didn't publish until I was forty-six, but that means I've been publishing relentlessly now for thirteen years. I still fuck up. I sent some second shelf poems to Able Muse last week, and Alex turned me down flat. And he was right. Alex deserves better of me, even if he runs a zine and doesn't pay for poems.

Tim--

I know you mean it well, but as a member of one of those editorial boards... "pack mentality"? %&*# you.

You're sending out a lot of submissions. Which is good. A lot of the poems are good, which is good. But don't piss away a lot of goodwill by portraying us as lemmings. Which probably isn't what you mean to say, but is, in fact, what you said. You are a valued regular contributor to the Raintown but don't think for one goddamn moment that you're the alpha dog. That position belongs to an English mother of two who is quite capable of ripping off your arms and beating you to death with them. Though she's generally quite nice.

Q, as an expert dog trainer, I assure you that there is something of a pack mentality in every walk of life, even among "uniformly excellent, formal-friendly editors." Actually not my insight, but Alan's charming way of belittling my recent successes!

I think you're selling yourself short a bit, Tim. We'd turn down a Tim Murphy C-list also-ran in a flash. Or an upper B-list or A-list poem that "isn't right for us" (sometimes that isn't a euphemism, by the way). The deluge of acceptances is not due to a "follow-the-leader" mentality on the part of editors, but rather to your writing a lot of really good poetry recently. But really, Tim, it risks hubris.

Congratulations, Tim. This proves that perseverence pays off. All power to you. Continued good luck.

C

Tim--

Here's why it borders on hubris. Your stuff goes through the same process as anyone else's, and whenever one of your poems goes in, someone else's doesn't get in. That person is, sometimes, a member of Eratosphere. That person is also, frequently, not without accomplishments. And sometimes that person edges out one of your poems, Tim. For example, the hunting poem in the upcoming issue belongs to Lance Levens. But rest assured that you all are judged on the merits of the individual poems as we see them, not on whether or not we've caught Murphy Fever.

Tim,

As one of those editors, all of a sudden, I must respond to this 'pack mentality' comment, and Quincy's subsequent charge. I can see how what you said works as a mild put-down of your own accomplishments. But I can also see what it (no doubt unintentionally) infers about us who, as it turns out, have decided to give your work a certain amount of exposure by publishing it. It does no harm to a new magazine's credibility to publish some 'established' and reputable poets, of course. But certainly in the case of Raintown Review and New Walk (and no doubt others), your comments are unfair both to your editors and to yourself.

Because we had started to correspond, I told you about New Walk by email and invited you to submit. You rewarded that invitation with, to my mind, some of your very best work. I passed your sub on to Nick without comment. His subsequent - and considerable - enthusiasm echoed mine but was all his own: he'd actually never heard of you before. This is a testament to the quality of those poems, not the size of your reputation. In fact, your reputation over here is much smaller than I think it deserves to be.

You should be very pleased with your multiple and frequently high-profile acceptances, and they are well-deserved, but I assure you that your notion of the 'pack mentality' does not come into it - at least it doesn't with us. I'm not offended, of course: I just think you're wrong, this time.

This reply reads like a sodding manifesto or something, but then it's high time for my bedtime story and I'm sleepy.

Rory