Like the stinging whippet call of a crow, the cold pierced the bulwark of my nose. I stepped into a poetic portal. Landscapes through the eyes of Wilde and Eliot sprung from pages into existence. Above me, hazy skies baptized raindrops and smeared the inky words of optimism. Until we meet again... I want to re-read The Old Man and the Sea because of this: ON HEMINGWAY I picture Hemingway sitting there with his literary scalpel dissecting a paragraph until all that remain are the narrative's vital organs the heart, the lungs the subject, the verb, perhaps a few adjectives, if necessary. Sweat on his brow, draft after draft, a lone surgeon he cuts away, while sipping a glass of cognac. Courtesy of The Young Authors Foundation (2004)