I heard they had a Whale God even before they knew there were whales.

"January 13, 2002 - Joseph Cooper, a 67-year-old missionary from Pennsylvania was attacked by Hindu fanatics outside of Trivandrum in Kerala. Cooper was beaten with sticks and cut with a machete as he was returning from a church meeting. Indian pastor Benson Sam and his wife also sustained injuries in the attack. Cooper was taken to a Trivandrum hospital where he is being treated for a deep wound to his right palm and other cuts and bruises. RSS activists are believed to have been responsible."

"November 18, 2002 - A local pastor and three Operation Mobilization workers were beaten in Goa after showing the Jesus film in a family home. The men were attacked by a mob of about 30 people as they were sitting down to eat with the family, who had been very receptive to the film. The mob also damaged a vehicle used by the Christian workers. Police eventually dispersed the mob and the Christians were able to file a formal complaint."

It's about 30 million, actually, according to the web.

Jordan's about 100,000 Christians in a country of 6 million. You definitely feel what it means to be in a non-Christian country. Even though Christians are pretty well tolerated, even the law is totally based on Muslim principles. It's wild.

Not yet. I've always wanted to, but, to be honest, before Jordan I was a little scared of India. Now nothing scares me.

I think I mentioned this, but in grad school I took a really cool class on Indian Lit - Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, Amitov Ghosh, Bapsi Sidhwa, Anita Desai, and my personal favorite, R.K. Narayan. Most of what I know about India comes from them, one way or another.

It's an adventure, like going to Shimla.

Tonight it's only -2 centigrade. We're not in Fairbanks or the North Slope, where it's been -42C (-44F) all day.

Naw, just going through one of my spells where poemranker makes me very, very sad. I'll be back soon, and full of vim.

I thought it was a good sentiment, aptly expressed.

In America, people say "schiz" sometimes, meaning "a schizo person".

Oh, I thought you were saying you didn't personally know any schizophrenics. Sorry, I misread.

I've worked in a couple of mental hospitals, too, you know.

I think there is a sameness of voice. (You don't see it reading journals because journal selections, as a rule, aren't workshopped; you see it from watching a lot of workshops.) The almost-inevitable result of workshopping IS a uniform blandness. Think of the poems you've workshopped: This guy says, I'm not so sure about your use of 'fuck' - isn't there a better word? This one says pallid as mushrooms seems a bit cliche; this one says he doesn't get ridged as a whale's mouth. This one says explore the sex imagery more; this one'd like more violence imagery. This says he didn't get it; this says it's too obvious. If you listen, your voice isn't your own; the poem's, um, unity is compromised. It's like democracy: with all the great inspired leaders and individuals in our midst, how do we end up electing the blandest, most anonymous President?

I'm not saying don't workshop. I'm saying put something out for the first reaction, like or dislike, and to catch big mistakes. When people say they want shorter lines or more sex, don't change the poem you posted; write another one using their ideas, see what they think of that. Even then, half the time you'll get one responder who hates your poem for every one who loves it - so that, after all the workshops in the world, it's still the loneliest profession.

re "I have had no personal experience with a schiz" -

The poem aside (I liked it), I wonder why you'd be compelled to write a poem about something you have no experience with. There are so many things you DO have experience with, insights into life in Goa or being a Christian in a place where Christianity is the minority religion that could really enrich us readers' knowledge - yet you (like Dovina with her Racism poems) might as well have written about life as a purple Mars-tortoise, for all you know of real schizophrenics. Why write about schizophrenia at all? Is it because Mental Illness (like Racism) is one of those capital-letter Topics For Poetry in our minds? Take my word for it: No poetry is really about Mental Illness. Or Racism, for that matter. Poetry touches on those things, but it's always firstly about your own experience.

I'm not trying to give you a hard time. (Like I said, I did like the poem.) My suggestion would be, now write one about YOUR REAL EXPERIENCE. If you'll let me make another suggestion, I'd like it to be about being Christian in a non-Christian country. Describe walking to work past Hindu sadhus, hearing the Muslim call-to-prayer in the middle of evening mass, knowing the laws of your home country aren't based on your own moral code - whatever makes up your actual experience. I think that would be ace. Thanks.

Longer, narrower layouts scream to me, "workshop!" With a lot of journals explicitly rejecting workshopped or workshopped-feeling poems now, it's gotten to be kind of a catch-22: sure the crowd here likes it - but aren't we part of the problem?

All the line breaks in the world don't hide that this is essentially lyrical and rhythmically simple. My suggestion: re-line-break it to highlight the rhythm, don't worry about shocking us with single-word lines. We're clearly not shocked.

Afraid not. Chat's still busted on my computer.