Here’s a tale of unexpected, dare I say grace. It starts with a workshop in March on Elizabeth Bishop at Jules’ Poetry Playhouse. We were given a few minutes to free write. A poem came to me with a bit of a vignette that I had no idea was in my head. A few months later I tweaked it, but in the main, “The New Language” is what flowed in the Playhouse. I included in a batch of poems I emailed on Monday to Lori Martin at Midwest Quarterly. Now Lori has published a few of my poems before, but only singly and only after the usual wait of a couple to three months for a response. Such a delay is normal in a literary world where a journal like Midwest Quarterly must receive thousands of poetry submissions each year. This time she responded on Wednesday of the same week, and she took not one, but three poems, including “The New Language.” I think, however, there may have been a catalyst in this surprising turn of events, and that has to do with my long time poet friend, Steve Bunch. Steve sent me a copy of the previous issue of Midwest Quarterly in which he had authored an essay on the history of the literary magazine he edited out of Lawrence, Kansas, for a decade, Tellus. More than once my name was mentioned in his essay. I don’t think it too far a stretch to imagine that my name was a little closer to the fore of Lori’s consciousness due to Steve’s essay.