Summer book

Terry Simons at Round Bend Press wants to publish a book of my poems, which sounds good to me and by summer I should have enough for a slim volume, which I'd call IN MY OLD AGE. There are the ones I publish here, which I'll consider drafts to revise, discard, or keep as is when I assemble them, plus I want to add three short libretti I did based on Maupassant short stories, an old project with a composer that fell through but may be getting revived. At any rate, Terry is excited to do it and you can't argue with enthusiasm. I also hope to plod forward on the new novella, to do some composing myself on the art song to film later, maybe in the fall, and also to continue my growing banjo skills and maybe even make a CD for friends (certainly nothing more than this with my average playing).

Thinking about those stories by Coover and Sorrentino that knock my socks off, I was wondering if I've ever written something that does this. Moments, surely. But a complete work? I know it wouldn't be any of my popular things, though these also are some with moments I cherish ... but candidates for whole pieces that wow me now, as in "man, was I really that good (once)?", are several early short stories, especially "The Thing at 34 degrees..." and "The Idaho Jacket" and maybe the novella "Love At Ground Zero" and maybe the plays "The Stiff" and "Sad Laughter" (and a former agent puts the screenplay version of this at the top of his list) and maybe the screenplay "The Brazen Wing," but none of these really knock me for a loop the way Coover and Sorrentino do, so I'll probably never reach their mark, but then this is all "matters of taste" (already heard from someone who thinks the Coover story is pretty STUPID (!!!)), and anyway great moments are nothing to sneeze at and I've written quite a few of those in various works over the years, perhaps some of the best in my novel "Kerouac's Scroll." Well, suffice to say, I can be proud of my archive and that is no small way to be when one comes around the clubhouse turn.

Hmm, I think when you don't have kids and grandkids you spend a lot of your old age trying to justify your existence ha ha.