Last night's reading was lovely, even cathartic. We had a dozen people in the audience, which felt like a crowd in the little gallery, and to sit and read with Gibson and Betsy, to play off each other's work, was a deep pleasure. We read in three acts--Desire, Grief, Giving--but didn't look at each other's choices beforehand, so any synchronicity or contrast was accidental and vibrating. Many of the audience members were poets, some of whom I knew very well, and that was lovely too--a true sense of community and careful attention. The night was a really, really good return to in-person poetry.

So, today. Trash day. Vacuuming day. Getting-Christmas-presents-into-the-mail day. Also, examine-the-drafts-I've-written-this-week day. Over the course of my little retreat, I've made four new pieces and done some serious thinking about what could be a small craft essay about sentence versus fragment. I don't know if that will get written, but I'm glad to have done the thinking, and I'm considering, too, how it might fit into a future generative writing class.

And the word histoire is now in my head . . . the French word for "story," which, for English speakers, also carries the connotation of "history." Truth merged with invention. I feel that is what I've been writing lately: histoires.