Summary acts to get into the narrative age.

Looking here I notice three writers who floated ten or more pieces by me: Bob Hicok, Matthea Harvey, and Anne Boyer. Hicok and Boyer also both floored me at least once, but they also threw a few spares and the occasional gutterball; Harvey hit it maybe every time she published save one.

Totally surprised to find myself enjoying the work of: Marvin Bell, Claudia Emerson, William Logan, Charles Harper Webb.

Names new to me that brighten my outlook for a journal: Gale Czerski, Susan Hutton, Kevin Honold, Beth Bachmann, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Sarah Vap, Priscilla Atkins, Alison Stine, Andrea Hollander Budy, Marya Rosenberg, Christopher Howell.

(Actually, Ali Stine brightened my outlook for everything, but that's another story only partly about reading.)

I was glad to see good new work by some of the people whose work made an impression on me in 2004 and 2005: Dana Ward, Sam Amadon, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Monica de la Torre, Sandra Miller, Kate Greenstreet, Kristy Odelius, Lara Glenum, Matthew Thorburn, Laura Kasischke, Betsy Sholl, Anne Pierson Wiese, Alex Lemon, James Grinwis, Tony Trigilio.

Proud to have been a longtime reader of some of the poets lighting up the journals: Ange Mlinko, Hoa Nguyen, Michael Morse, Joseph Donahue, Terence Winch, George Kalamaras, Jeni Olin, Maggie Nelson, Merrill Gilfillan, Matthew Rohrer, David Shapiro, Mark Halliday, J. Allyn Rosser, Dean Young, Linh Dinh, Natasha Tretheway, Rachel Loden, Peter Gizzi, Drew Gardner, Joanna Fuhrman, David Trinidad, Alli Warren, Graham Foust, Alice Notley, John Yau, Clark Coolidge, Marcella Durand, Brenda Coultas, Sam Truitt, Joshua Clover, Pamela Lu.

Any demographic truisms to be needlepointed from this data will reflect the facts of the sample set: the poets who sought to publish in the year's literary journals. Considering that when I was a baby poet it was fashionable to ascribe the gender imbalance in publications to women's unease with unsolicited submission, I guess at least that much is looking up.

I'm assuming readers of the robot are already aware of the public service provided by Duotrope -- if not, it's worth at least as close a look as the excellent list Spencer Selby keeps.

One of my resolutions this year renews one I made a few years back: to submit poems to at least one magazine every month. I'll want to finish a poem a month, then.