Yesterday I got hired to lead an afternoon how-to-write-a-love-poem workshop for the Maine Historical Society . . . in Longfellow's house. So if you're mucking around Portland on February 9, you could sit around and be romantic with me for a couple of hours.

[Poet gigs are so peculiar. You just never know what odd thing is going to turn up in the inbox.]

I also wrote a short contributor's essay on the genesis of my poem "Sonnets for the Arsonist," which is forthcoming in the Split Rock Review this spring. In fact this poem does have a strange genesis, since it was triggered by a co-writing experiment with my friend Nate. So writing the little essay was enjoyable, and I am hoping Nate will someday dig out his own poem from our messy word painting.

Then I started dinner, and then I helped out a friend who'd just gotten her car crushed up in an accident so couldn't get to her dog-sitting job, and then I came home to discover that dinner was not as far along as it should have been, so it was a very long time later before we ate it.

Now I am having a hard time being awake, but I expect the coffee will accomplish its good deeds soon. It's very cold outside, and I have much classwork to do this morning, and a tiny cozy room to do it in. Home is my favorite workspace.