Last night's storm was wild--wind, rain, flickering power, crashing tree branches--but somehow the zoom link held and I did not get kicked out of my reading, though I fully expected to. It was lovely to hear Meg and Cat, to note their accidental resonances as the howl and the hiss of the storm intensified their voices.

It's still too dark to see what damage was done, but I expect I'll spend some of today picking up sticks. I have another poem brewing, a double sonnet, and I've been reading Betsy Sholl's gorgeous new collection, As If a Song Could Save You. I baked cookies and walked to the bookstore and pulled together a plan for next week's Monson session (playing with form). Today I need to clean my study, get the place into shape for my upcoming round of Sunday-afternoon classes. I hope to go for a walk. I hope to go out to the salon to write tonight.

I've been thinking a lot about free-verse sonnets. I read my Accident Sonnets last night, and I've been planning the form class for the kids, but also I've been asking myself if the lack of rhyme and regular meter is a cheat or an opportunity. I mean, I can rhyme and pace . . . and I can do them pretty well. But something different happens when I remove those strictures while retaining the fourteen-line fence. The jaggedness runs up against the fence, tears itself against the fence. A kind of ferocity sets in.