This blog is the first Google result for animal poems that don't suck.

Take what I can get, I guess.

Been doing a lot of pruning of how I spend my online time. My quest for "keeping up" was getting out of hand. I can't read everything. I don't want to read everything. A couple months ago I started removing blogs from my RSS feed that bothered, annoyed, upset or bored me. Just like going through poetry submissions -- the first set is always easy -- obvious, unpleasant stuff. Now I'm making more difficult cuts -- liking the blogger, but not his/her blog or occasionally finding something valuable but it not being worth the trouble. All subjective, I know.

Now I'm considering the handful of listserves I subscribe -- each offers something I'm interested in, hence the reason I signed-up in the first place. But are a handful of helpful messages worth the numerous nasty, dumb or unnecessarily political rest? If feeling "bad" is a regular result of belonging to something, maybe I don't really belong and should move on. I feel like an outsider practically all the time -- why sign up for more alienation?

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This summer I'll be laying out and editing three or (hopefully) four No Tell books: Elapsing Speedway Organism by Bruce Covey, The Attention Lesson by PF Potvin, Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home (chapbook) by Rebecca Loudon and hopefully a collaborative chapbook called Wanton Textiles. I'm arranging an early December northeast book tour to promote those books. In January No Tell Books will publish the second Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel and Shafer Hall's Never Cry Woof. I have several manuscripts I'm considering for 2007 and have been embarassingly slow getting back to folks.

Also this summer, I'm reading Bedside Guide submissions (and still going through general No Tell submissions sent last month and a handful from April). Those who've sent work will hear back later this summer.

The reading period for general No Tell submissions will resume in October, not September. We have more than enough work (and then some) to schedule the rest of the year.

Now I'm going to review the book contracts Tender Buttons put together. She's working off all that free rent from years long ago.

Home ownership has its privileges.