Hamilton Stone Review # 10 is Now Up!

October 1, 2006

Final changes this morning to the tenth issue of the Hamilton Stone Review . This has actually been a good journey, figuring out how to do the web pages without exhausting myself totally, working with Halvard Johnson, our most excellent poetry editor, and Lynda Schor, the sharp writer of stories who works very hard being gatekeeper for the prose. Next year is the press’s tenth anniversary, if you count from my publishing of Trespassers. The coop formed a year or two later.

I watched Not As A Stranger last night. I read the book or maybe a Reader’s Digest condensed version was a kid, but I don’t think I ever saw the movie. The doctoring stuff was fascinating, and it was a kick to see Frank Sinatra as a sympathetic hard working if wise-cracking doc. Olivia De Havilland as a dowdy older nurse with a Swedish accent– well, it worked if you accepted the whole suspension of disbelief, the shiny smooth fifties style, dramatic black and white, Gloria Grahame being sultry with the crazy long upper lip. Robert Mitchum, of course, is still the sexiest male presence ever. It was on Channel 13 with no breaks, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, waiting for Andy to come back from doing chores at the lake in Massachusetts.

I’m looking at the next six weeks and thinking I am unlikely even to make it to Costco (I need some things we keep around the house like pine nuts to make pesto with the last of the basil), I’m so overbooked and busy. I spent all day yesterday on desk work, and today I have papers and recommendations. When I go away for a couple of days, it really takes me a week to catch up.

I seem to write so much less now and (IMHO) know so much more. So what does it mean that I wrote more then? Then it was all based on the sharp physical sensations of youth and the pretty clear observations, plus a big imagination. But it was as if I was so busy writing, I never really put my weight down in the world. And as if now I believe I have more to give because I’m much more engaged in the world, and I have less and less time to do it!