When I first began posting on this blog I was inspired by a weekly horoscope that offered the following: "...It's important that you do what you do best without any embellishment, pretentiousness, or self-consciousness. Don't you dare try to hard or think too much or twist yourself like a contortionist to meet ... expectations. Trust the thrust of your simple urges." For ten months I worked collaboratively on a manuscript of imaginary letters with a dear, longtime friend only to eventually scrap it, or, let's say temporarily set it aside to age. We felt we could no longer move forward due to constraints that were being placed on the work from the outside. It was our decision that we were in fact twisting and contorting, re-writing and subsequently producing something that began to no longer resemble the original work. This simply didn't feel right. We opted to hold true to the initial intention. I then began assembling a book-length manuscript of poems and...