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The Pass Shooter and Intimations of Mortality will appear in Gray’s Sporting Journal. Pont de la lune and Dream Poem, in Chronicles. The first section of In David’s House appeared in Poetry and on Poetry Daily under the title Asperges Me. The final section, in Raintown Review. The other sections will appear in the Anglican Theological Review. As will Champion and To the Corinthians. The St. Peter poem will appear in the Sewanee Theological Review. Black Joe Lake and Syrdal were recorded by Minnesota Public Radio for Soundzine A new journal edited by Rory Waterman has taken For My Nephew and Permission Granted. Much of the Second Step will appear in First Things.

I'm on a roll

You ARE on a roll, Tim. Congrats!

Martin

That's quite a game-bag, Tim. I'm pleased for you.

John

Great, Tim. Congratulations.

dwl

Thank you Martin, John, and David. It is forty-two years since I decided I wanted to be a poet, started at seventeen and never wrote a decent poem until I was twenty-five. Slow learner. But now the poems come so fast I can't believe it, and I have what Dana calls "an editorial consensus," so they get published as soon as they go out. It is my hope for every young poet at the Sphere that they persevere in this unremunerative and ancient art.

I just received PDF's of Missing Mass and Soul of the North, two poems of mine I workshopped at TDE shortly after I got out of treatment. They will be in Chronicles in March. I want to thank everyone who helped me with these verses, especially Alan Sullivan.

Good going, Tim. Your dedication is an example for us all, and the results are well-earned. That’s quite haul.

Andrew

Raintown Review took Two Hands Prairie, and First Things, Address to the Manger. I am recording an interview and four poems on the subject of alcoholism for Rob Godfrey's new Local Radio France this morning. I am also recording a pilot podcast for the Eratosphere this morning, and I shall be posting it, an explanation of what Alex and I are contemplating, and soliciting your opinion at General Talk. I've sent out a ton of stuff in recent days, and I'll just keep you posted on acceptances at this thread in the next week or so.

Edited back: Oh, and Michael Burch asked me for a manuscript for the Hypertexts. I gathered ten rather large poems, all of which succeed the poems in the online anthologies, Poemtree and Alsop Review, which collect so much earlier work. I'll put up the link on this thread, and I imagine Mike will publish today. If memory serves me right, and it's failing of late, all of the poems were products of the Deep End, and I thank everyone who pitched in and helped me hammer them into shape. The ten are among the best poems I've written since Very Far North came out in 2002. I've used the Hypertexts to cut and paste poems for my intros at Distinguished Guest for years. Yesterday I browsed, and of course lots of us are there. I am delighted to be joining such a fine band of poets.

I just received the March Chronicles which contains two substantial trimeters, both TDE alums, Missing Mass and Soul of the North. Thanks to everyone who helped me with these.

I mentioned atop this thread that First Things took the second section of Second Step. Dave Yezzi just took sections one, three and four for The New Criterion.

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

Rory, Quincy, it is a mild put-down of myself. Younger poets call these "brag posts," and this particular one is so lengthy and involves so many poems (80?) and media (a dozen?), that I thought it necessary. I shouldn't have done it at the expense of you fellows, and I'm sorry. For the record, as I said, it is Alan's opinion, not mine. And Rory, I agree with you that Nephew and Permission are among my best. New Criterion turned them down, but Yezzi has more than expiated his sin by taking so much other good stuff. Quincy, I love Lance's hunting poems, and I'm delighted you've taken one. I've never sent a hunting poem to Raintown, but I'll keep you in mind.

That's okay, Tim. As I say, I wasn't offended. Congratulations!

Rory, Quincy, this is almost turning into a General Talk thread, which I don't mind at all. I'm sure you fellows try your hardest to judge everything dispassionately. But I think it's a lot easier for me to publish than it is for say, Chris Childers or Nick Friedman, for that matter the two of you. Thirty years ago the same was true of Red Warren and Tim Murphy. So I don't entirely ascribe a run of the table like this to the merit of the shooter, but to the virtue mentioned by ChrisGeorge, persistence. Unlike a Corbett or a Beaton, I didn't start in my fifties but in my teens. Although I took a few years off in the last four decades, I never quit. The main reason I post on this board and Quincy's equivalent is to encourage young writers never to give up.

Tim,

I cannot tell you how happy I am to read these words. Over the past couple weeks, I've seen a spirit of caritas and humility in your posts that I hadn't always noticed before. Whatever it is you've been doing lately, it bears keeping up.

In the meantime, congratulations on your recent productivity and success.

Peace to you and yours,

Bill

Thank you Bill. I too prefer me sober. Alex just took Prayer for the Virtuous Pagans and Hunting on Thanksgiving for Able Muse.

Tonight a favorite editor took an ambitious sequence, identity to be disclosed later. Pinch me I must be dreaming.

Edit back: I sent a wild sonnet, heterometrical, loose iambic, my first submission to 14X14. Peter gently reminded me he took it a month ago!

Able Muse published a chapter from my prosimetrum-in-process last winter, and Gregory Dowling has just taken another, "With Alan in the Wilds." It recounts our travels in the West and the Far North, and it includes seven of the best poems from my first book. Gregory agrees with me that the poems gain from being woven into the stories, and I'm delighted they'll gain a new audience.

http://www.thehypertexts.com/

There are substantial selections of work from my first two books anthologized at Jaime Alsop's Review, and likewise at Caleb's Poemtree, but nothing after 2002. So when Michael Burch tracked me down, I chose ten of the best poems I worked on in the years I was so active at the Deep End, 2003-2008. My thanks to everyone who helped me hammer these into shape.