I spent much of yesterday working on Frost Place business: writing letters to faculty, letters to teacher-consultants. We are doing very well with applications so far (roughly twice as many as we had last year at this time), and the office hasn't even begun its full-fledged marketing push. So I am very pleased and excited.

Some of you international readers have spoken to me in the past about whether or not you should apply, and I want to encourage you again: yes, please do join us. I daresay most American teachers know almost nothing about the place of poetry in other national education systems, let alone humans' everyday relationship with it around the globe. We already have one non-U.S. applicant, and the presence of more of you would be an enormous gift to all of the faculty and participants. So if you want to speak to me privately about the logistics of applying, email me at ironduke at tdstelme dot net.

When you go to the Frost Place website, you'll note that the sidebar now includes a poll on "teachable Frost poems." This was the brain child of one of our teacher-consultants, who hopes it will be a way to draw more teachers into the conversation. If you're so inclined, take part in the poll and/or share it with your colleagues.

And by the way, remember that our participants aren't simply K-12 teachers. Some are, yes. Others teach at the community-college or university level; others are teachers-in-training. But many participants aren't teachers in any traditional sense. They work in government offices or in social-service settings. Some are volunteers. Some are simply individuals who love poetry, or worry about poetry, or wonder why it matters. The Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching is the only major teaching conference in the United States that welcomes such a broad array of applicants, and we've been thriving with this approach for more than a decade. So please consider joining us. And if you are looking for references or reviews of the program, I would be happy to put you in touch with previous participants. Just let me know.

Tomorrow I'll be participating in a panel discussion on poetry and education, a feature of this year's Plunkett Poetry Festival at the University of Maine at Augusta. In March, I spent two days at Hall-Dale High School in Farmingdale, a visit sponsored by the festival, and I'll probably be answering a few questions about that visit as well as more general questions about the topic. Though I won't be reading any of my own work, I will bring along copies of Same Old Story and A Poet's Sourcebook in case you're interested in acquiring either one. If you want one of the older books, just let me know before tomorrow morning.

In other news: believe it or not, I saw a robin in my yard.