Red-haired poets, etc.

Did anyone hear the live Prairie Home Companion from NYC today? We were on our way to Funston to walk the pooch and heard it on KQED. Guy Noir was hired to help? cheer up? someone's daughter who had moved to NY, dyed her hair red (!), adopted an all-black wardrobe, and become a poet. Regardless of what one thinks of Keillor's avuncular approach to poetry or his perhaps ill-advised anthology, this was very funny! A "former poet laureate," played, I think by Billy Collins, reviewed this poet's first collection in the Times and said its major mistake was that it was legible. He, the PL, is revealed to be the person who invented MFAs, wherein a poet is put in a room for 2 years, made to write, and charged $20,000 -- and at the end of two years is awarded an MFA. Ah well, maybe you had to be there -- there being listening to the radio -- but it was quite amusing, if you can find it to listen to on a podcast.

And believe me, if I can be amused these days, you can be amused. Though I have no information of any sort, I'm pretty sure the news I'm waiting is not good. I'm so tired of hoping.

My life is getting busy, busy, busy. I will be juggling two different contracts soon, a writing and an editing one. As of the end of January, I should be teaching writing (not poetry, alas) at SF State. In March I'm doing another Poetry Workshop for City College CE.

But all I want for Christmas is for my manuscript to get picked up by somebody. How can all these people like it but not enough to publish it?

Oh, I also want Santa to bring me some new reading glasses, because I lose the damn things all the time.

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Can anyone out there help us with our updating problem in BlogRolling? It was working fine for ages but now doesn't seem to work at all (doesn't show blogs as updated when they have been)? I haven't been able to get any help from them, though I'm still trying. Thanks,
-d