[Tim Murphy]

Commonweal published a superb essay on Devotions yesterday: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/h...ned-detachment
Gerry Cambridge, thank you for the only fine author photo ever taken of me. Commonweal has also recently published three major odes:
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poem-ode-our-lady
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poem-return-rosebud
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/p...-gratitude-ode
I've only been publishing here for five years, and they have a really wonderful author archive. https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/s...Timothy+Murphy

Word having got round of how gravely ill I am, editors are asking for work, and acceptances and contributors' copies are piling up around here. My thanks to First Things, Hudson Review, Alabama Literary Review, and Able Muse, among others.

I finished radiation in Fargo yesterday, and I embark to Rochester for the Mayo moon shot on Monday. A LOT of physical pain. On the bright side, Last Poems?, started Jan 10, my 67th birthday, when I got the awful news, is already 89 pages. My Committee of Serious Readers, who gathered when Alan Sullivan became too sick to edit me ten years ago, feel that I have kicked into a higher gear I didn't know I had. Wish me joy, and let me acknowledge my deep gratitude for the prayer intentions many of you conveyed on Cathy Chandler's thread.

NDSU Press is bringing out Hunter's Log, vols. II and III, illustrated by the great Eldridge Hardie at the start of June. Late this year or early next they will publish my monster, Hiking All Night, Poems of 2017. They come to about five hundred pages of new work. We are skipping eight collections in their queue so I can put my best foot forward, but we'll get to those when I do a New and Collected Poems next year.

[John Isbell]

Good morning Tim,

I am sorry to hear about the pain and wish you the very best for the Mayo visit. I also wish you joy in your writing, and find it moving that you have been spurred to new achievement. May we all find that within ourselves.

Write on!

With all good wishes,
John

[Andrew Szilvasy]

Thank you for the update, Tim. Be well, stay strong, and keep writing.

[Tim Murphy]

Thank you fellows. Happy to say I am writing every day.

[Jayne Osborn]

Tim,

You're an inspiration to us all.

"Happy to say I am writing every day'' is great to hear, and long may those editors beat a path to your door!

Jayne

[Ned Balbo]

Right now I'm flipping through my used copy of Set the Ploughshare Deep which I ran across (in excellent condition) at The Annapolis Bookstore in 2013.

So many lovely, well-wrought lines in such beautifully realized poems!

"Out for an autumn walk,
I hear the great geese cry
and hail a red-tailed hawk
spiraling in the sky."

I'm sure your more recent words will continue to delight the editors & readers asking for them.

[Maryann Corbett]

Lovely poems, Tim, and may they continue as long as possible.

[Jim Moonan]

Tim, I'm glad to read your poetry, sad to hear of your pain. Let your writing be your salve.

Disenchantment Bay and the Ode To Mary poems are beautiful.
x

[Tim Murphy]

Thank you everybody. Jayne, I'd somehow missed your stepping up as site administrator. Having served shoulder to shoulder with Carol Taylor and Maryann Corbett, I know what a job that is, and I thank you for your service.

When I pointed out to the editor of First Things that I am the most often published poet both there and Commonweal, he said that's like getting the Palestinians and Israelis round the same conference table!

Tony Domestico's insights into the sonics of Disenchantment Bay are the best I've ever seen. It was the last poem Alan edited for me, and we did it at Dick Wilbur's eerie in the Berkshires ten years ago. It's also my lone representative in the Poetry Out Loud workbook.

The new book is a big memento mori, and my attitude toward this trial is best summed up in the newest poem:

Eleven Weeks

Eleven weeks, I think they’ve been the best
in seven decades I have roamed the earth.
For me work is the measure of my worth,
and chronic pain is just a cruel test.

Offer it up. I don’t believe this pain
will go away, but if it lasts for years
I promise it will wring from me no tears
but poems written on this windswept plain

whose topsoil I once farmed to my perdition
and pray that I shall hunt again this fall,
maybe a mallard wheeling to my call,
meat for my mother’s table, sacred mission.

[Vera Ignatowitsch]

Eleven Weeks made me shiver, Tim. Bravo.

My husband went through it for almost 2 years. He was a veteran, but this was a whole different level of courage.

Best,
Vera