Astropoetica: Mapping the Stars through Poetry is pleased to celebrate National Poetry Month with the release of its spring issue, featuring:

• Rapture, by Barbara Crooker
• Nix, by Deborah P Kolodji
• Star Man Every Night, by John Grey
• Northern Lights, by Joanne Merriam
• Leonid Meteor Shower, by Barbara Crooker
• Do Red Dwarfs Have Habitable Planets?, by Barton Paul Levenson
• My Dear Astronomer, by John Grey
• Instead, by Barbara Crooker
• Devil’s Verse, by Michael Constantine McConnell
• Triangulation, by George Moore
• In the Sun’s Empire, by Valentin Grigore
• Stars in Daylight, by Jared Carter
• Age in Years, by Patrick Ryan Dunn Sullivan
• Steady Flames, by Lyn C. A. Gardner
• Deliberation, by Cheryl Lewis
• The Long-Term Effects of Auroral Kilometric Radiation on the Earth’s Population, by Matt Betts
• Cruithne, by Clare Walker
• The Newest Moons of Dirt And Rome, by Michael Meyerhofer
• BPM 37093, by Michael Meyerhofer
• Saturn Backlit by the Sun, by Jared Carter
• No Small Thing, by Michael Travisano
• Cosmic Agglomeration, by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
• Everywhere Spirals, by Rick Novy

I have just finished sending out proofs for the spring issue of Astropoetica. Given the many delays this issue has faced, I am sorely tempted to release it on April Fool’s Day.

Next on the list is tackling my submissions backlog.

On the Winter Solstice I received an amazing gift from my friends in SARM (Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy). Andrei Dorian Gheorghe wrote to tell me they had dedicated their delightful Favourite Constellations project to the Fifth Anniversary of Astropoetica. I am deeply touched, and I urge all fans of astronomy poetry to take a look.

To briefly update everyone on the status of Astropoetica, I will say that I am working on the next issue and hope to have it up this winter. Scheduling issues have proven to be more challenging than I ever anticipated. My apologies to those poets eagerly awaiting the publication of their works. It is going to be a lovely issue.

Until then, may you enjoy clear night skies and the great works of the Romanian astropoets. Ad astra!

The roof is fixed, the computer is resurrected, and the slush pile is finally dwindling. So much passive voice for so much activity!

I’ve cleared out all but about thirty submissions, which I hope to address shortly. I have a couple of contributor checks yet to mail, and then it will be time to finish coding the next issue.

I’m getting there, baby step by baby step. Thank you all for your patience.

My computer, which has all of my Astropoetica mail on it, is currently in pieces in my dear husband’s evil genius lair. I am told there will be a miraculous resurrection “soonish”.

Perhaps this soonish will be sooner than the visit from the tree removal guys. (Yes, I still have a big oak tree lying next to my house.) As you can imagine, there is something of a waiting list in our area.

Perhaps it will also be sooner than the roof inspection by the insurance adjuster.

Unfortunately, this means that presently I can only offer an estimate of “slightly after soonish” for more submission responses and the launch of the next issue.

Until then, if you desperately need to get a hold of me, please try me at my hotmail account (user name:mleg23).

Just a quick update today because the power is off and on. I managed to steal some time this week to reply to Astropoetica submissions, but there is still a sizable backlog. I am hoping to clear the rest by the end of this month, weather permitting.

That’s a big question, though. Tropical Storm Fay has already given us a few frights, and we’re not quite done with it yet. An oak fell next to my house last night, taking down gutters flashing and some of the roof with it. Fortunately, the damage appears to be largely superficial as nothing appears to be leaking yet. I’d knock on wood, but I’m too afraid of knocking another tree over.

So far we just have the usual lake forming in our backyard — no serious flooding here, though the earth worms did try to get in when I opened the sliding glass door this morning. The last I heard my neighborhood’s exit was blocked by a fallen tree, so I don’t expect to be going anywhere soon. Not that I wanted to be on the roads in this weather anyway.

On a positive note, the stargazer lily we brought indoors yesterday bloomed this morning. If we had left it outside, it would have been crushed by the tree you see in the background of this picture.

The Spring Issue of Astropoetica is now up, featuring:

• There, where the universe begins, by Terrie Leigh Relf
• True/False Colours, by Megan M’Clure
• July ‘69, by Tim Myers
• The First Sky, by Meg Smith
• Draco, by Janie Hofmann
• Middle School Star Party in Greater Boston, by Meg Smith
• Glow-in-the-Dark Galactic Discs, by Megan M’Clure
• Spying Orion, by Megan M’Clure
• Vertigo, by Joanne Merriam
• Bodies Make Poor Lenses, by Joanne Merriam
• Good Fridays, by C. E. Chaffin
• Inconstant, by J. C. Runolfson
• Plutonian Elegy, by Peter Dabbene
• Sunspot, by Magdalena Ball
• Sifting Stars, by Ann K. Schwader
• Tycho, by Janie Hofmann
• String Theory, by Lisa Geoffrion
• Arrow, by Darin C. Bradley
• Geodesy, by M. Frost
• The Cosmic Background Radiation, by Dave Shortt
• Humanizing the Sky, by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
• Stellar Picture in Town, by Valentin Grigore
• Teacher and Cosmos, by Boris Marian (Mehr)

As we were celebrating the touchdown of the Phoenix Mars Lander last Sunday, I was reminded of our other landers and some of the poetry we’ve published about them in Astropoetica. The marvelous “Ares Vallis, 1997-” by Tim Jones seems particularly fitting.

While I’m finishing up the spring issue, why not revisit some of these other fine poems about the the Red Planet?

• “Mousing Mars,” by Ann K. Schwader
• “Southwest Mars,” by Deborah P. Kolodji and Ann K. Schwader
• “Stone,” by Tim Jones
• “The Red One,” by Michele Harvey
• “Through a Lens Vaguely (Mars ‘03),” by Ann K. Schwader
• “When I Heard the Learn’d Astrologer,” by Greg Beatty
• "When Mars Comes Close," by Kevin C. Little, Jr.
• “Phobos and Deimos,” by Kenneth Pobo
• "Water on Mars," by M. Frost
• "Tharsis Lil," by Mary Jo Rabe

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M

I suspect it is not often that one can say their co-editor has doubled in age since their last issue came out, but Arden is a crawling, climbing, cruising lass of eight months today.

Proofs for the spring issue have been sent. The new issue should go up within the week.

As for submissions, I have a hold pile from March and April I will address as I can around Arden’s very busy days…

The wee one is napping, so I have a moment to catch up on some much overdo posting.

The Fix has posted two kind reviews of Astropoetica in recent months. In her first Distillations column Jennifer Mercer reviews Drew Morse’s “Overcoming Distance (for Eris & Dysnomia),” which first appeared in Astropoetica last year.

David Kopaska-Merkel writes a thorough review of our Spring/Summer 2007 Issue, giving special attention to the poems of Marsheila Rockwell, M. Frost, Amal El-Mohtar, Mary Alexandra Agner, and Shelley Lesher.

What a joy to see poetry reviews featured in the pages of The Fix! It’s a trend I definitely hope to see continue.