It's one degree above zero this morning in the little northern city by the sea--balmy compared to much of the rest of northern New England. Thank goodness for brand-new furnaces . . . though of course the curse of household disasters refuses to relinquish its grip. Last night, as we were driving back from dinner with friends, the clutch in Tom's truck suddenly gave out. Fortunately we were close enough to home so that he could more or less coast into the driveway. But while I'm teaching today, he's going to be figuring out where he can get his truck towed to on a Saturday morning and what the hell we're going to do about vehicles next week, given the giant snowstorm coming in tomorrow and Monday and the fact that I have to drive back and forth to Monson on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Yesterday afternoon a friend took me to see Hamnet. I did not love the novel--I felt, there, as if the character of Shakespeare was somehow too thin, compared to Agnes's. But the movie was far more convincing, in large part because Jessie Buckley, the actor who plays Agnes, has the most incredible of faces. The emotions she conveys through her expressions constantly also reveal the motivations and inner lives of those around her. It's really remarkable. Yes, the film is a shameless tear-jerker, and I cried much of the way through, but it also is incisive about how people misunderstand one another's grief and how an artist channels sorrow. I wasn't sure I wanted to see it, but I'm glad I changed my mind.

Otherwise, the atmosphere in southern Maine continues to be grim. We're under siege--by ICE, by cold. I'll spend today in class, curled up in my blue chair in my tiny sweet study, as thugs terrorize my neighbors and freezing mist coils over the bay.

Today will be my sort-of day off, as I'll be zoom-teaching tomorrow. By sort-of day off I mean I won't be editing all day (though probably I'll put in a few hours) but will instead be prepping for tomorrow's class and trying to catch up on house obligations . . . all of which, you'll note, counts as work so I don't actually know why I'm pretending that today will be a holiday of any kind. But I will be off my usual weekday schedule, and I will have some breathing room around the edges, and I have been trained by society to denigrate my seven-days-a-week household labor, so no doubt all that feeds into my pretense.

Tomorrow Teresa and I will be leading a class for Monson and Frost Place alums that focuses on using visual prompts to generate new poem drafts. In a few ways it will be a sneak peak into our plans for this summer's poetry conference, which will center around notions of transformation. We've got a sizable group signed up, and temperatures in northern New England are supposed to drop below zero, so it should be a good day to curl up in a chair and talk and write.

I know I need to design and schedule another open Poetry Kitchen session for the spring, but I haven't had the headspace to create yet one more new thing. I've been working on a sonnet project with Teresa and Jeannie, working on a performance project with Teresa, Gretchen, and Gwynnie, writing new curriculum for the summer conference, tweaking my class plans for the high schoolers, plus reading stacks of books, both alone and in tandem. I've got plenty of poems I could start sorting through for a next collection, but I haven't made any headway there at all--I can't seem to find adequate open brain and body space. I guess this is why people go to artist residencies, but such luxuries are not in my future.

Well, everything will shake itself out in time, in some way or other. Either I'll put together a new collection or I won't. It's not the end of the world if I never publish another book.

 

This is the prettiest meal I've cooked so far in 2026: sautéed Micmac brook trout with lime and rosemary, pappardelle with garlic and Aleppo pepper flakes, butter lettuce with a simple balsamic dressing, and sliced blood oranges. The photo is a reassuring contrast to the terrible chapatis I made yesterday, which refused to puff and ended up in the compost bin (although the chicken curry they were supposed to accompany was tasty). I've been the primary household cook since I was a teenager, but one is never too old for spectacular kitchen failure.

Portland got yet another dusting of snow overnight, and we have an odd brief warmup forecast for this afternoon before temperatures dive below zero for the weekend. I should go out for a walk before the Arctic moves in; but with ICE terrorizing our town, yesterday's was nerve-wracking. Every time I caught sight of an SUV at an odd angle or a van idling along the street, my heart sank. At the grocery store I suspected all burly self-satisfied-looking white guys of harboring cruel intent. I longed to reach a hand out to my cheerful Latinx checkout boy and say, "Be careful," but what kid wants to be embarrassed by an unknown aging shopper in a loud hat?

Well, I will go out again, and I will keep my phone at the ready, and if I had a whistle I would use it. I hate this thuggery with all my heart.

Frigid weather is settling in over the little northern city by the sea. And so is ICE. Two schools in my neighborhood briefly locked down yesterday after administrators learned that agents had been sighted at a local gas station. Tribal governors, mayors, school and church leaders: everyone is anxious. Maine, it seems, is next on the punishment list.

Meanwhile, the temperature is 9 degrees, forecast to drop below zero by the weekend. The new furnace heaves and grumbles, and Chuck peers with interest into the registers, his whiskers trembling in a hot wind. I have finished rereading Pale Fire and have almost finished Idyls (what a heartbreaking ending; this is the saddest of poems). I'll start Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book today, find another novel to read, get back to the editing pile, prep for my high schoolers, get onto my mat. Take a walk. Which now also requires: Watch out for my neighbors. Keep my phone at the ready. Record evil.

For the first time in days, no snow fell overnight. Outside looks like a school day, a work day--clear streets and shoveled driveways and cars not disguised as hippos with wooly blankets. T will be back to work, and I will be back to solitude--also working, but I worked yesterday too, so there'll be no "back" about it.

I had a very unpleasant dream last night: about being in a house full of people and trying to find a bed to sleep in, but nobody wanted to share a room with me because everyone disliked me and took the opportunity to tell me so in detail. It was a very high school sort of situation, but that didn't make it any less painful in the dreaming.

It's odd how the malaise of dreams lingers, even as the specifics fade and vanish. I woke up a pariah, and now, even among my familiar everyday comforts, that dream-self resists erasure. I remain unlikeable, unbearable, unwelcome.

I woke up to find that the Bears lost their game, and now I too have lost every speck of interest I might have had in the football playoffs. I can't possibly root for the local team, which is allowing two players who have been criminally charged with violence against women to compete as if they're heroes. And none of the other teams from the west have piqued my interest in any way. So I guess I'll be watching the Super Bowl  (if I do) entirely for Bad Bunny.

But in good news it does look as if we'll be seeing an Orioles game in Sarasota! I'm quite excited. I've always wanted to go to a spring training game, and now I am getting my chance.

In other good news, Tom happened to casually mention yesterday that he had today off from work. As far as I can recall, he's never gotten this holiday before, so that was a welcome surprise. Though I myself cannot take the day off (or the whole day, anyway), I am enjoying another slow start before I take the ice-axe to the mountain of editing that is my fate. I slept till 5:30, without interference from the Big Kitten, and now I am comfortably drinking coffee and considering next steps. I ought to clean house (though that's awkward with another person in the way), and I ought to take a walk (though the roads and sidewalks are slick with new snow), and I ought to buckle down and deal with those manuscripts (no excuses there). Yesterday, as planned, I made a big Sunday dinner--roast chicken, mashed potatoes, pan gravy, cranberry relish, peach cobbler--so the refrigerator is packed with useful weekday leftovers. In short, the day feels like a regular Monday but also not like a regular Monday, and I'm not sure how it will end up shaking out. But I do love knowing that T is upstairs sleeping.

Young Charles perhaps thought today was my birthday because he allowed me to sleep till almost 7 a.m. But here I am, finally--comfortably groggy and ready to write to you on this snowy Sunday morning. I was under the impression that yesterday morning's flakes wouldn't add up to much of anything, but in actuality snow fell all day and into the evening, slopping up roads, filling up driveways, and this morning everything is encased in a dense ice-snow crust. We drove across town yesterday evening for a birthday party, and the conditions were dicy. Clearly the amount of accumulation surprised the road crews as much as it surprised me.

The Bills lost their playoff game to the Broncos last night, so my never-intense interest in the NFL has likely dwindled away for the season. I will have to return my thoughts to baseball. I've been excited to learn that the Orioles play spring training games in Sarasota: maybe I'll get a chance to see a game when I'm down there working in March. Or maybe nobody else will want to go. You can't depend on an artist to enjoy a game.

Today we're going out with our neighbor to see the new Jim Jarmusch film, Father Mother Sister Brother. Otherwise, I'll just be puttering . . . watering plants, cleaning bathrooms, roasting a chicken. I'm in the mood for classic Sunday dinner: mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, cranberry relish, maybe a cobbler with the last of my frozen peaches. I finished Atwood's Penelopiad yesterday, started reading Antonio Tabucchi's Dream of Dreams and rereading Nabokov's Pale Fire. I'm still working my way through Tennyson's Idyls. I did a lot of snow shoveling and washed a lot of blankets and towels, but I did not write any new poems. Maybe that will happen today, but maybe not.

This coming week will be crammed with editing, and next Saturday I'll be teaching all day. The poems will have to worm their way through the cracks.