I'm really enjoying my monthly poetry group. As you know, I was nervous about accepting their invitation to join. After all of my years as a solitary, I had a hard time envisioning what regular group review might be like for me. But as it turns out, the group is both useful poetry-wise and nourishing friendship-wise, and I've relaxed into being a more social poet than I ever was before. I know the success of these things depends entirely on the temperament of the members. Not every group is going to be able to combine rigor with open-heartedness. So I've been lucky to fall into these hands.

I'm editing hard this week, trying with all my might to get this project done before flying west. If the footnotes behave, I may manage it. But it's also a week of appointments--dentist, haircut, niggling phone calls and paperwork . . . those itchy necessities that take bites out of a day.

Students continue to sign up for my classes; Frost Place applications are starting to show up in my email. In stray moments I'm sewing on my dress and reading Trollope, a little sugar and cream to slip in around the edges of all of this prep. I want to write. I want to work in my garden. But I have to wait.