Sunday odds and ends

*I love watching the Winter Olympics, and it's been a joy to see the trials. But for the life of me it looks like the rules are: Good: Stay upright and look elegant. Bad: Fall down. Not quite the same thing as a walk-off home run in the ninth inning.

*I've been on a crusade to let people in Georgia know that Eugene O'Neill lived here for four years in the '30s. More about this in coming days. This man won four Pulitzers and the Nobel Prize for Literature and almost no one knows he was a Georgia writer. Shame on us!

O'Neill

*Been reading Jane Kenyon's poems again, again, again. If you want to see why simplicity, directness, and passion can make great art, go buy this woman's books.

*Wonderful review of my book The Flower Seeker: An Epic Poem of William Bartram in the new issue of Oyster Boy Review. You can find it here: http://www.oysterboyreview.org/issue/21/

*Starting in the spring, I'll begin to fill in my dance card for readings and autographings for my tour this fall for It Is Written: My Life in Letters. Keep me in mind!