As Jayne says, I am not ancient. And if I actually get to West Chester on a fast jet that will prove it. On the other hand, if I die on the way you will be right.

Churchill became Prime Minister for the first time at the age of seventy.

65, actually. But close enough... ;)

Um..yeah...I have a few notes here in my inbox. I personally hope to still be doing wild and amazing things well past 100. I was only playing around and actually don't think of 70 as ancient or anything of the sort. I know a 70 year old mason that I would seriously not tangle with even armed. Just to be clear. If I had any real leanings about age I wouldn't have been so oblivious to how that might be perceived. Sorry for any unintended sleights.

Sorry Bill. But sixty five then was seventy five now. I gather my daughters can expect to live to a hundred if they lay of the drinking and smoking. However, I woud advise them notto follow that path. I attribute my own longevity to my mother's drinkig of Mackeson stout (on doctor's orders) throughout her pregnancy. That and the Indian climate.

In which I use a great poem to make a point.

It’s traitorous, I suppose, on several levels and in several directions, but I wish everyone well in this.

I cannot help wishing I was going to West Chester this year, just to hear whatever John Whitworth might have to say about the great love of my poetic life, light verse. At the same time I can’t help but feel disinclined to attend, because of the perceived wrong done to Kim Bridgford, a person I don’t know.

Poetry swallows almost everything, our pettiness, rancor, and loyalty misplaced or otherwise; and time swallows poetry. I strongly suspect that in a few years all this will seem very trivial to everyone but those who are intimately embroiled in it; but what happened was wrong, and I can’t see myself going. Yet those who can’t see what the fuss is about, let bygones be bygones, or take the long view and get on with it won’t get any grief from me.

Best,

Ed

Oh do come, Ed. I should so like to meet you.

I've never been to the WC Conference because I can't afford to fly out there and it is always at a time of year that is very busy for me. So it is easy for my to boycott. But I think if I had been many times and the means to return, I wouldn't.

I don't know Kim B., and I know little about all of the details of what happened last year. But if this conference was as important to us as a community (writers of formal poems) as we seem to agree it was, then the University's willingness to put the conference in peril, including canceling it last year, for unsavory reasons should piss us all off. And if there is a good alternative to switch to, as there now apparently is, we should thumb our collective nose at WCU and carry on without them.

But, as I said, this is easy for me to say. Maybe not so for others.

David. R.