26 Comments
User's avatar
Chris Rauber's avatar

Brilliant opening, sir.

Chris Rauber's avatar

Sorry, X.P. I should have simply appreciated your work. Apologies.

X. P. Callahan's avatar

No worry’s!

Celeste's avatar

I love this! So relate. Freedom is a blue highway with no preconceived destination.

Lev Raphael's avatar

Rogue hyphens are also a plague and they work my last nerve. [edited because voice rec did not type "hyphens"] Likewise, rogue lack of hyphens. Most often seen: sign-in and sign each used the wrong way.

Kim Nelson's avatar

LoveLoveLove! Your word work, honed by those decades of midwifery and resuscitation is so f'ing masterful. The imagery, duality and blunt force are so so good.

X. P. Callahan's avatar

Thank you, Kim, and thank's for the restack.

Mary Roblyn's avatar

Rogue apostrophes. Apostrophes gone feral. Those that travel in gangs. We’re not letting them on the blue bus.

Mary Roblyn's avatar

🤣

Maureen Doallas's avatar

Love this, X.P. I can identify with all of it, though my nearly 35 years of work as an editor did not involve the literary. I don't even bother anymore to note with a [sic] the need for "its" and not "it's", the too many times a "me" is used when it should be an "I"; or the use of two dashes when an em dash is called for. Our generation is the last of its kind. I intend to go out proud of what I could do with somebody else's words.

X. P. Callahan's avatar

The Last of the Mohican's

LeeAnn Pickrell's avatar

No wonder I like you both so much—we’re all editors! I spent today wrestling with page proof corrections that weren’t made that the production editor says she checked and they were all made but they weren’t and around and around we went.

X. P. Callahan's avatar

Oh no, the old Page Proof Tilt-A-Whirl! EDITOR'S UNITE!

Maureen Doallas's avatar

I laughed when I read this and X.P.’s response. What a life of words we’ve had!

pamm hanson's avatar

I ADORE this!!

X. P. Callahan's avatar

Many thank's!

Mary Holscher's avatar

This is such a striking description:

"...the thankless labor

of yanking a malformed masterwork manqué

from an eager beaver with a book inside."

Laura P's avatar

Very cool

Ann Collins's avatar

I like this poem, but only on Wednesday's.

X. P. Callahan's avatar

Ha ha ha ha ha! I will be careful not to test you’re limits.

Thomas Rist's avatar

The sonnet meets Ginsberg meets… XP Callahan. Very nice!