Things have been hopping at RHP.  Now that your general editor is a government employee, working in public school system, he had nearly 2 weeks off during Christmas and was able to finally get Carolyn Adams' online artbook up and running.  And by "he" I mean "I."  And here we are with Issue 18.  And by "we," I mean "we."  We're already reading for Issue 19 and we have already accepted some work for an upcoming issue featuring poems under 30 words. 

Special issue ideas are streaming in. 

• I had the idea of supplying 20 or 30 titles and asking people to write poems under the titles.  That issue, if I do it, would be called "Confiding in the Blind," which is the title of a poem I haven't written.  I had a conversation a few years ago with a blind person who told me that he realized one day that a lot of people confide in him, even though there's really nothing in particular about his character or demeanor that should lead people to tell him their secrets.  I theorized that people unconsciously confuse his real perceptual issue, blindness, with an inability to betray people's confidence by revealing their secrets to others (muteness, I guess.)
   

• Someone suggested an issue of science fiction poems.  No.  No no no.  Not there's anything wrong with it. But no.
   

• There are a half a dozen or so authors that appear quite frequently in RHP.  I thought maybe I'd have them write poems about each other.
   

• I'm considering an entire issue devoted to Houston, Texas.  I've never been there.  (Shout out to our Houston-based friends!)
   

• An issue about tools. 

• Poems for small appliance repairmen.

• An art issue devoted to portraits of local television news anchors.

• By the way, why do we get 10 minutes of weather in every 30 minute newscast? Unless there's some real weather going on, do we really need 10 minutes?

• Here in Alabama we have a legendary TV weatherman who has a freakish knowledge of Alabama geography.  "This hook echo looks like a funnel cloud and that cloud, unless I'm mistaken, is located roughly over the 3rd unleaded gas pump at the Chevon station on Maple Avenue in East Barkersville, a little town in Elkin County at the intersection of county roads 11 and 39.  Right next to Aunt Betty's Barbecue Shack where they have some truly outstanding onion rings.  Go ahead and get in your closet or under a piece of heavy furniture." 

• This same weatherman got some national attention recently when he said he didn't believe in global warming.  He said, without a trace of irony, that he doesn't know of a single broadcast meteorologist who believes in global warming.  So, there you go.

• An issue on building materials.

That's it.  Enjoy reading.

 

Dale