[Tim Murphy]

Interpreter's House in Britain just took, Crazy Kid Stuff, a big unrhymed hendecasyllabic poem.

[John Whitworth]

Good place, Tim. Good editor (i.e. poet and friend of mine).

[Tim Murphy]

Thanks, John. Simon Curtis is a fine poet and editor, and I've known him for many years. He has four short, devotional poems of mine coming out in his next issue.

[marly youmans]

Oh, that's quite a list. Perhaps it will inspire me to submit; I tend to be just a little bit lazy about these tasks. Maybe it's time to make a 2013 resolution... Congratulations!

[Charlotte Innes]

Yes, I'm of the Marly ilk too... Find it terribly hard to submit. I agonize for hours!

Tim, I'm curious, how often do you submit--every week? Or? You publish SO much!

Of course, you're wonderful poet too, so you probably get heaps of acceptances, right?

Charlotte

[Tim Murphy]

Marly and Charlotte, I've said this before. I get very far behind in submissions because I write so much. I get very far behind in editing my own work, Rhina is not tough enough on me. But about twice a year I send out a blast of poems, thirty, maybe forty. And yes, almost all of them are published.

Of course, I'm not in Dick Wilbur's league. Twenty-five years ago I could have papered an outhouse with rejection notices and ripped them from the wall to useful purpose. I asked him how many rejection notices he got, and he said, "I've never had one." Then he said, "Actually, the Disappearing Alphabet was rejected by the New Yorker which forwarded it to the Atlantic Monthly, which published it."

Lick the stamps. Send the poems.

[Tim Murphy]

I hit the jackpot. Last year our Catharine Brosman published Multum in Parvo, a collection of twelve epigrams, in Chronicles. I sent thirty epigrammatic poems to Greg Williamson, poetry editor of Sewanee Theological Review, and he took twenty-six of them. Multum in Parvo II.

[Martin Elster]

Glad to hear about all the good news, Tim. Congrats!

[Janice D. Soderling]

Tim, setting aside for the moment (or taking for granted) the worthiness of your poetry, all this friend of mine, my hunting buddy, known him for years, etcetera, tacked onto your notices of publication might lead others to believe that it is who you know, the old boy's network, who your mentor is that determines whether one is published or not.

That might well further discourage those who are already wavering on the question: to submit or not to submit.

Do you ever test new ground or just stick to sending to your friends and boon companions?

[marly youmans]

That Wilbur anecdote! Of course, it says something about the strength and beauty of his work. But surely it also says something of interest about coming up as a poet in a certain place and time, with a certain sort of Northeastern education and teaching career--having that wonderful world where poetry mattered to many people, knowing Frost and Stevens and so on. I've read interviews where he talked about the poets of his generation, particularly Bishop and Lowell, and about Frost and Stevens, but don't know so much about the other elements.