Best wishes, Tim, whatever your wishes may be.

My thoughts are with you, Tim.

Thanks again to all for prayers and best wishes. Clive Watkins and David Anthony, thanks again for your warm hospitality on that book tour eighteen years ago. I am incredibly blessed to have Jenny Reeser as my literary executor (and Alan's.) She has more moxey than any young poet I've ever known.

NDSU Press and I will immediately turn to a Collected Poems, an enormous affair. Through-printed, rather than a poem per page, it will exceed 1000 pages, and I can't tell you how many poems I have executed with my little Thompson .410 pistol. It will contain fourteen individual collections and most of my Charles Beck woodcuts as internal covers of its books, so it will be a very handsome affair. I meet with my editor February 1.

I'm glad people liked Distance, probably the best poem of the new year.
Last Poems is now fifteen pages long, and it begins with this.

Prayer for the Farmers

Tonight I add a fourth chapter to prayer.
I pray first for the ministries of priests
who serve me at their sacramental feasts
and showed a way back from my black despair.

I pray next for the sick, for I am one,
an aging man with badly injured shoulder
who hopped so nimbly once boulder to boulder,
though thank God I can still shoulder a gun.

Third, for my worthy friends who knew not God,
I hope they’ve passed the Gates. Arriving thence
may they behold Christ’s radiant countenance.
Ogling the angels may they all be awed.

Fourth, I shall pray that every farmer thrives,
beginning with the five audacious Millers,
masterful farmers all and skillful tillers
of land the Lord leases them for their lives.

As usual I route these prayers through Mary.
This death sentence I have received from cancer
to which doctors and shamans have no answer
is a small, final cross that I must carry.

Each of us has a rough-shod race to run.
Care for us, Lord, and let Thy will be done. 

For me our meeting in Grasmere in 2002 was stimulating and highly memorable and had for my writing life unforeseen and uplifting consequences. So it was good to meet you again the following year in West Chester - and as a result to meet so many other fascinating people, such as Catherine Tufariello, Gregory Dowling, Pete Fairchild, Deborah Warren, Joe Harrison and above all Anthony Hecht - none of which would have been possible without your encouragement and support. You know I am not religious, Tim, but you are in my thoughts.

Clive

Tim, I'd like to join my thanks to Clive's.

When I posted my first sonnet (the second poem I ever wrote) on TDE with quivering heart, you came on first and praised it, saying (I'll never forget your words) that I'd been "waiting in the weeds". I assume to this day that this is a duck hunting metaphor?

The encouragement you gave that day to a raw beginner made a world of difference, and helped bring me to a path that, by following it faithfully, changed my life forever.

Thank you, Tim. And may it be a great adventure.

Cally/Chrissy

They ask themselves: "What will Jenny think when I go all tribal on her in my poetry?"

Five stars from Jennifer "Tired Blood" Reeser :o

JTBR

For a minute there I thought he said "more money". I didn't think that was true.:)

Two new Norse dreams came, so that's what Jenny is referring to by "all tribal on her." We have a plan. The femur is a crisis, a twig ready to snap. The week following next, an orthopedic oncologist will insert a metal rod through the marrow, knee to hip, perhaps even do a hip replacement.

Radiation, which requires five day bursts, will start soon in Fargo.

Chemo: Mayo wants me to participate in an experimental trial combining chemotherapy and immunotherapy. This will require a trip every two weeks for two months. Then they will pet scan me and see if it's working. I'm going to do it. My great personal physician is delighted that I shall participate in the trial.

Cancer in three places, very malignant; friends, the situation couldn't be more dire. But as my brilliant young oncologist said, "We can't cure this, but we can control it." He must be brilliant to make it from Mumbai to Rochester, Minnesota.

The new book, Last Poems, begun on my birthday January 10, is 27 pages. I meet with my editor Thursday to plan the New and Collected, probably a four volume monster, 1400 pages. We will through print it like the Big Boys though, not a poem a page, and that will bring it down to about 1000 pages, I guess. 14 of my Charles Beck woodcuts on the covers, internal and external of the four volumes, it will be a boxed beauty.

Thank you again for your best wishes and prayers. yr Lariat, Tim

Many thanks for the update, Tim. You're at the top of my prayer list (and the last 2 people who were there got a lot better -- just sayin').

Hi Tim,
Is Feeney still alive?
Best,
David