This past Friday, I received a rejection letter from Boulevard Magazine for my three poems: Two Beds, Air Hole, and Where We Are. I need to get them back out into the world, but the summer season presents many problems for submitting poetry. As many of the publishers are colleges, they take the summer off. Hopefully I can squeeze them in before the seasonal deadline.

Finished reading Tom Robbins' latest novel, Villa Incognito. I flipped the last page, read the last paragraph, shrugged my shoulders, and sat the book down indifferently. Neither the reaction I expected nor desired. The novel began in classic Robbins' style. A badger with enormous testicles, uses his vast nutsack to parachute down to earth from the heavens. Four pages later he seduces a woman and they have sex. It's ironic that while anything can happen in the beginning, absolutely nothing happens at the end. I don't mind anticlimatic endings, but this novel left nothing to hold onto. It's like a mysterious fog that descends into the town, creating a mysterious ambience, but disappears without leaving a mark. The whole book is filled with Robbin's blitzkrieg prose, full of dynamic metaphors and analogies. The problem with metaphors is that if they don't work, they fail magnificently, and become a distraction. Robbins takes big risks -- the allure of his style -- but failed metaphors haunt the book, glaring like tombstones in a meadow.

One thing that I am curious about, is Tom Robbins' allure to the female population -- more so than any other author. I know a lot of women infatuated with Robbins' books. He has a rock star persona -- perhaps that is part of the attraction. I'm interested in what it is. Please enlighten me if you know the reason.

Sent my poems Barcelona, Words, and Empty to Flyway.