Thanks everyone for all the kind words but you are suppose to come in here quietly and whisper way to go Teresa Ballard so not to anger the gods. I mean look at poor Medusa, all she did was say out loud she was beautiful and loved Poseidon and the girl got a head full of snakes and all those stone men outside her door. Having had both stone men and snakes, I don't need the trouble.

Anyway I finished my ten pages of syntax and the manuscript is almost done again. One of the most useful tools Carolyn taught me (that I am passing to you) was the mapping technique where you take each poems topic thread such as: hide=sex, animal, betrayal. You do this with every poem and then you weave in and out your topics through out the whole manuscript so then the whole book becomes a poem, with each poem being its own line. Painting is like this: walk away and it is color, come close it is nothing more than brush strokes.

Yes, I have thought about this book way too much and yet so not enough.