Last night I posted the following on my Facebook page, and I want to reprise here, for those of you who may not have seen it in that forum.

Today marks the final day of the 2020 Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching/Writing Intensive for Teachers: Online Edition. This year's conference stands up there as one of the most challenging teaching gigs I've ever undertaken: five long days immersed in unfamiliar technology; working to support participants who, like me, were filled with dread about the world and their vocations; who were exhausted and angry and frustrated; who were struggling to find space for their inner lives, their creative spark. But we did it: we figured out how to be human, to share our love and our wonder, to write and cry and revise and ponder and laugh. We may be separated, but our community holds fast. I am so incredibly grateful to the participants who brought such magic to the conference. I am forever indebted to the faculty who shared their brilliant questing minds with us. Thank you, Didi Jackson, Angela Narciso Torres, and Cleopatra Mathis, for your devotion to your art, for your camaraderie and your friendship. Thank you, Jaime Allesandrine, teaching fellow extraordinaire, who brought us laughter and courage every day. Thank you to my partners in this endeavor--staff members Kerrin McCadden, Maudelle Driskell, and Jake Rivers--who believed in this program, and in our teachers and poets; who made this event so rich, who made me feel so secure. I value you beyond measure.

The conference was exhausting and at times scary; almost always awkward; filled with conversational  blips and chokes due to video and audio lag. Nonetheless, it still worked . . . and worked well, in its own crazy needful way.

Today, I hope to sit with the poem draft I wrote during yesterday morning's session. I hope to hang on to the sensation of kindness and goodwill that blossomed through my screen all week long. There was magic, despite everything.