[W.F. Lantry]

Hey, folks,

Kate and I just checked the climbing roses growing along the fenceline down by the forest. Would you believe it? The deer came along and munched even the thorny rosestems all the way back to the central cane. Even the climbing Tropicana was denuded. I just smelled one yesterday, and now they're all gone. Beautiful orange, they were, mixed with red. Well, I guess that means those roses won't need pruning anytime soon.

On the other hand, I'm overdue for pruning the forums. Holidays and readings and stuff, sorry. In any case, the pruning must happen on Sunday. On Monday, there will be a huge meteor shower, and net access will be cut off for five days. So, anyway, Sunday everything older than June 1 (as determined by last reply date) will disappear from the deep end, met, non-met, fiction, and translation. So clip what you want, before it all disappears forever. Or goes into a deer's stomach.

You know, they even ate James' pumpkin vines? Durned things. I'm losing all my sympathy for Bambi!

Thanks,

Bill

[Michael Cantor]

Bill, if it's a pruning warning, maybe you should put that in the thread title. Otherwise, many Spherians may think it's the name of a new journal (possibly bilingual and published in Nara, possibly something from the Northeastern Tribal Casino Council) in which you have three poems. I'm all for subtletly in poetry - but not in pruning warnings.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

Bill, if it's a pruning warning, maybe you should put that in the thread title.

Michael,

Thanks for your thoughts. My worry is that pruning warnings sometimes get ignored (they are, after all, just boring housekeeping messages), and then, once the pruning is done, colleagues write and say, "But, but, I..."

And then, what am I left with to say? Nothing but some lame statement like "didn't you see the warning?" And then they say something like "Yes, but it was too boring to read. I'm a poet, I don't have time for that stuff. And now you've flushed my lovely goldfish / butterfly / song sparrow irrevocably down the toilet. It's a crime against Art and the Muse. A crime, I say! And you, Sir, are a criminal! Off with your head!"

And why? Because *I* made the message too pedestrian, too quotidian! Not that any of this would ever happen, of course. It certainly didn't happen, oh, say, just last month!

Bottom line: two roads diverge in the sacred wood, and I'm screwed no matter which one I take!

Oh, and here's another smilie, just for you. I'm not even close to my quota in this message!

Thanks,

Bill

[Maryann Corbett]

Psst, Bill. Tell Michael he's getting wimpy. In the rough-and-ready old days of 2006, when Carol T. was policing the premises, I don't think we even got warnings! Pruning just happened pretty regularly every thirty days.

Then of course we went without anybody to do pruning for quite some time, and when it started up again, warnings seemed like a good idea.

Wouldn't it be great, though, if people understood and assumed that pruning is the normal order of things?