--YOU’VE BECOME THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING

 

…At some point over the weekend we crossed the 400,000 view mark on the blog.  Thank you for reading this thing where I share all my junk.  I’m genuinely humbled and flattered that you do.

 …Though I have lots more, it seems like the right day to take a break from posing poetry…

…I got some good news the other day that made me happy for all kinds of reasons.

Here’s the note that came via email:

 

_{Hi Len,}

 _{So happy James Thomas and I are at the permissions stage of our W. W. Norton anthology.  Still more to go, but we’re getting there.  We love your work and are delighted to be including it in this collection.  I’M NOT SUPPOSE TO BE HERE AND NEITHER ARE YOU is one of those special books you keep hoping to find, and rarely do.  Great work, man—truly.}

_{Below is a more formal, official letter we send out.  But wanted to send something more personal as well.
 Keep ‘em coming,
 Robert (Scotty)}

_{Dear Len Kuntz}

 _{James Thomas and I want to congratulate you for having your stories, “Lens” and “The Hard Dance” included in our forthcoming anthology: NEW MICROFICTION, to be published by W.W. Norton in the Spring of 2018.}

_{They were chosen from thousands of stories considered.  We were delighted to see, in all our reading, how the form (a narrative work of fiction in less than 300 words) has evolved since W. W. Norton first published Flash Fiction then Micro Fiction, more than two decades ago…}

…And here are some things I like on a  Monday.

-“I was going to make them rip the jersey off my back.” Phillies rookie Brock Stassi about his determination to make the majors despite being the 1,021^st player taken in the draft and spending six seasons in the minors

-“You cannot exist for even 30 seconds on planet Earth without desiring something.  I use the word yearning with my students because it suggests the deepest level of desire.  Fiction is the art form of yearning.”

-“Every morning I go into a place within myself where it’s scary as hell, but there’s also wonderful stuff there.”-Robert Olin Butler

“To be an artist means to never avert your eyes.” Akira Kurosawa

-“I grew up in public schools in Australia.  My parents moved a lot, so I went to five different schools the first years of my education.  But every school had a music room and a music teacher.  Music was part of the curriculum, no different than English, Math or Science.  So I’ve been shocked that it’s started to be seen as a fringe subject that is expendable.” Keith Urban

-“Raise your words, not voice.  It is rain which grows flowers, not thunder.” Rumi

-"For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you'll never walk alone." Audrey Hepburn

-"I'm not happy, I'm cheerful. There's a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all. A cheerful woman has cares but has learned how to deal with them." Beverly Sills

-"Will and I could hardly wait for the morning to come to get at something that interested us. That's happiness." Orville Wright (1871 - 1948)co-inventor of the airplane

-For the world’s so dark without you,

And the moon’s turned down so low,
And I get so lonesome about,
Way in the night, you know.

--James Whitcomb Riley