If you happen to be in central Maine this coming week, please remember that the conference readings are free and open to the public: Maudelle Driskell reads on July 7, I read on July 8, Teresa Carson reads on July 10, all at 7 p.m. at Tenney House (47 Tenney Road), the first Monson Arts building on the left as you come around the curve into town from the south. Teresa and Maudelle have never read in Maine before, and they are ambitious poets and tremendous human beings, and I urge you to see one or both of them if you can. The staff is working on a livestream option, and I will keep you posted on whether or not that will be available.

In other goings-on: this is the cover photo for Calendar, my forthcoming poetry collection. I published my first book just before I turned 40, and now at nearly 60, I am publishing my tenth, which is amazing to me. Twenty hard years of writing. How did I ever do it? I have no idea. This is Tom's photo, of course--a portrait of the top of our Harmony driveway during spring mud season. The puddles look like serene ponds but are actually car-destroying potholes. That could be a general metaphor for life in the woods.

Today: housework, yardwork, laundry, errand running. I want to get to the fish market to buy picked crab for tomorrow's crab cakes. I need to get a stain out of a dress. The weather up north will be sultry, but no doubt also buggy, and probably cool at night and maybe rainy now and again, so packing will be complex, as it always was for the Frost Place. The rural north loves extremes. With a big lake right outside my cabin, there's also water to be considered. I'm not much of a swimmer, but on a hot afternoon I might be a dabbler, and maybe there will be kayaks or canoes, which are more in my line. 

It's odd heading out to a place that is both known (I teach kids in Monson and used to live 20 miles down the road) and unknown (I've never spent so much time in town; I've never taught there in the summer; I've never led the conference there). I hope the days will go well; I think they will. But I also don't quite know what to expect, especially around the edges.