Then a bit of personal literary news: the latest issue of LIGHT (No. 49, Summer 2005) includes a very complimentary review about my mini-chapbook, Excerpts from Poem's Search for Meaning, at Mary Veazey's Sticks Press (http://www.stickspress.com).

In light of all the discussions of accessibility at New-Poetry, with me more or less on the side of never compromising one's aesthetic for the sake of connecting to more people, its final paragraph amused me: "For a delight in words, and for the work they may be forced to do when yoked in harness; for as well a knowing skill in putting these surly drabs through their paces; and for, finally, its high sophisticated pleasure in being highly readable (these adjectives are not often found in the same yoke) I urge you to obtain this collection." What was most encouraging to me about the review was that the reviewer ("Particle") so accurately described my over-all aims in these (entirely verbal) poems (which I consider slightly surrealistic, occasionally slant-worded, Iowa plaintext lyrics. That he liked what I was up to was a happy bonus.