Arden Mira Kanyicska arrived at 23:38, September 27th, 2007. She weighed 7lbs 7oz, measured 19.7 inches in length, and was said to have the most powerful lungs in Labor and Delivery.

Welcome to the planet, Elijah Kai!

Many congratulations to my beautiful goddess sister Jaime and her husband Thomas.

I am currently working through the backlog of submissions for Astropoetica. I apologize for the wait, but I expect to be caught up within the next week.

I do want to take a moment to address a problem I encountered this morning. Perhaps I have been a bit naive, but I have generally assumed that those submitting to Astropoetica are submitting their own work. It’s such a niche market, after all; whom would you plagiarize? Robert Frost? Diane Ackerman?^*

However, I recently received a compelling submission that turned out to include the plagiarized works of some early Chinese poets. I confess, up until this point, I haven’t been too paranoid about this kind of thing, so I haven’t run obsessive background checks on all the poems I have published. Why did I check these poems in particular? I can’t say I recognized them right off the bat, though I have read one of the poets who was plagiarized.

Who knows? Maybe I was thin-slicing, a la Malcolm Gladwel’s Blink. Or maybe I just had plagiarism on the brain after a Turnitin vs. intellectual property rights debate we had in class.

So! In case this wasn’t already abundantly clear:

I have no interest in publishing plagiarized poems.

I have no interest in publishing plagiarized translations of poems.

I read diversely, and I am pretty good at finding stuff. Don’t try me.

^* If I receive any Frost or Ackerman rip-offs after this post, retribution will be swift and merciless.

The Winter Issue of Astropoetica is now up, featuring:

• Winter Solstice, by Eric Gadzinski
• Middle Night, by Mary Alexandra Agner
• Deep Impact, by Deborah P. Kolodji and Zolo
• Shoemaker-Levy 17, by Greg Beatty
• Mother Earth on a Starry Couch, by Arlene Ang
• Robbery, by John Grey
• Devo, by Cheryl Snell
• The Heavy Degenerate’s Prayer, by Greg Beatty
• When Mars comes close, by Kevin C. Little, Jr.
• The Mice, by Meg Smith
• Nutation, by Greg Beatty
• We Shrug Our Shoulders, by Sommer Sterud
• Valediction, by N. M. Courtright
• The Astronomer’s Last Nights, by Arlene Ang
• A Person, Not an Iceberg, by Greg Beatty
• In December, The City & The Sea, by N. M. Courtright
• Waning Crescent, by M. Frost
• Cosmologist’s Rendezvous, by Linda Neuer
• A Perfect Storm (M17), by Mary Cresswell
• chaos, by Jessica Langer
• E = mc², by Briony Dennis
• Star Census, by Pat Tompkins
• The Myth Museum, by Nut and Geb, by Briony Dennis
• Perspectives, by Lark Beltran
• i find it hard to believe in stars, by John Borneman
• Because in My World, by Dan Mitrut
• Genesis, by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
• International Astropoetic Dialogues (7), by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe and John Francis Haines
• Universal Impressions, by the Romanian young astropoets of SARM

Happy Lunar New Year!

Happy 30th, Vy!!!

I’m sorry I didn’t get you any black roses, but I do hope you appreciate the personally autographed fan photo of your idol I sent. At the very least you can relish the thought of Ãron’s complete mortification as I obtained it.

Good luck finding Sanctuary. If worst comes to worst, you can always unleash that Doomsday Virus you’ve been working on and take us all down with you.

Cheers!

The Fall Issue of Astropoetica is now up, featuring:

• Star Wanderers, by Bruce Boston
• The Quantum Casino, by Karen A. Romanko and Robert A. Desharnais
• nova, by Greg Beatty
• Starsick, by Steve Klepetar
• stellar by no starlight, by Vance Roberts
• Mousing Mars, by Ann K. Schwader
• celestial highway, by Scott Virtes
• Mysterious Erupting Star (V838 Mon) [October], by Mary Cresswell
• Gravitate, by Philip Reyth
• Thermodynamics of Cooking Stone, by Cheryl Snell
• Why I am a Green Bank Fan, by Greg Beatty
• Perseids in August, by Arlene Ang
• Star Shark, by Ann K. Schwader
• Moon Union, by Pat Tompkins
• She lists, by Luke Frangione
• Solar Systemic Grammar, by Greg Beatty
• Camera c, by Linda Neuer
• The “Little Neutral One,” by John E. Gray
• a section of a pas de deux, by David Krump
• Covenant, by Greg Beatty
• The Unfinished Map of the Sky, by G. O. Clark
• What Happens to a Kuiper Body, by Greg Beatty
• Light-in-Chief of the Night, by Alexandru Conu
• Zenon’s Visions, by Adrian Sima
• Tonight, My Dead Friends, I Remember You, by N. M. Courtright
• The Drinking Gourd, by Jennifer Schimmrich
• In the World Where Time Moves Backward, by Steve Klepetar
• Is It Me, Or Is That You?, by T. E. GilChrist
• The Old Comet’s Last Road, by Dan Mitrut
• Seasonal Haiku, by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
• International Astropoetical Dialogues (6),
  by Alastair McBeath and Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

Happy Birthday, Morgan!

While we wait for the chorus of dancing Hoffs to take the stage, let me wish you and Yomoco a brilliant year full of inspired, sophisticated and standards-compliant design.

By the power of Orange, it shall be so.

Let the epic navel-gazing begin!