Blindingly sunny weekend with the cousins and with Emily. Sitting by the lakefront in Skaneatles (skinnyATlas) getting sunburned. Worry over the husband of a friend of Emily's who was in a car accident in Montreal on Friday. (They say he'll be okay.) Dog chasing sticks. Worry over the mother of another friend of Emily's with breast cancer. And grilled swordfish with salsa on top for dinner.

Wonderful stuff at the new Tarpaulin Sky: new work by Juliana Spahr, one of my north star poets, and an interview with some illuminating discussion of Spahr's unusual use of pronouns (I'm tempted to dub them "active pronouns"). There's also a terrific piece on the ecopoetical work of Jonathan Skinner and Jane Sprague. A copy of Political Cactus Poems has been lying on my desk for a month now waiting for me to review it: I'll get to it soon, it deserves a wide readership. Jane has a poem in the issue (it appears to be a continuation of her remarkable long poem The Port of Los Angeles) and there's great stuff by Joyelle McSweeney and others. Finally, Deanne Lundin contributes a well-written review of Heidi Lynn Staples' Guess Can Gallop, the kind of review that actually makes me want to read the book—in this case even to disregard New Issues' lamentable cover design (yes, how shallow of me to care about such things, but there it is). One of our finest online mags.

July Fourth. Whatever. The cover of this week's New Yorker just about sums it up for me.