This is a momentous day for me, as finally, after many, many months of behind-the-scenes planning, I can announce the new Frost Place Studio Sessions--the year-round, online arm of the Frost Place, offering not only poetry-related classes, seminars, readings, and such but also, I hope, reaching out into other genres and disciplines.

I'll be serving as creative director of the enterprise, with support and solace from Carlene Gadapee, who will be my associate creative director, and Maudelle Driskell, the executive director of the Frost Place--and also the person who conceived this idea and asked me to take charge of it.

To launch the sessions, we've scheduled two programs for the fall, both of which I'll be leading (though I hope to be bringing in many other teachers in the future). The first is "Learning from Nina Simone: An Introductory Chapbook Seminar," aimed at poets who are just beginning to collect a sheaf of poems and want to discuss and experiment with the process of constructing a collection. We're going to use Nina Simone's first album Little Girl Blue as our touchstone for the process.

The second program is "Revisiting Homer's Odyssey," which explores passages from Emily Wilson's new translation as a way to consider contemporary concerns about power and identity.

As you'll see on the home page, we've got several more classes on deck, and I am already hearing from teachers with ideas for more. It's all very exciting.

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And as if my day wasn't overflowy enough: Vox Populi has posted a new poem, "Mother to Son." I hasten to say that this poem is not autobiographical, but a reaction to the generalized sadness of young people that I've been witnessing during the pandemic.