Yesterday's Two Mail Items:

1. Jen Tynes' Found in Nature - Horseless Press. I asked for it in the original Holiday Wish List (11/29) and Tynes answered the call. Ask and you shall receive. I first got turned on to what she was doing a few months back from her poems submitted during the Octopus August reading period. Then I found some stuff in 4.4 of the Diagram, I think. The book is great by the way. I read it through in one sitting. Each little prose poem works as part of the whole really. It is heartbreaking. It is strangely broken and strangely sad. I loved it. And it is beautifully hand-made--and mine is signed! 18 of 50. Get yours.

JT is not the only one to respond so kindly to my innocently tossed-about wishes. Gina Myers (New School student, reader for Lit, listener of superior music, and exceptionally talented poet) stumbled upon Wish List Addendum A (12/11) and is going to send along one or so issues of Lit. I have been meaning to subscribe to Lit for a long while, so this will certainly satisfy that particular overdue want. Lit, along with several others like Fence, Canary, Verse, Denver Quarterly, No, and Jacket, to name a very quick handful, really seem to have their finger on the pulse. So maybe, thanks to Gina, I'll be a little more informed. And I'll be sure to get a subscription for my future issues too.

2. My Jan/Feb issue of Poets and Writers. I haven't really sat down to give it much attention yet, but I have flipped through it while in my lavatory reading room. I always start at the contest deadlines, and the "calls for" section in the back. Then after seeing the same print mags ask for the same poems, and no one I know too well win some prize I forgot to enter, I turn to Kevin Larimer's LitMagNet section to see to whom KL is passing out shout-outs. And thanks to No Tell Motel, I got one alongside Laura Carter and Kirsten Kaschock. That's always fun. Well, it is.