A thin rain is trailing away into dampness. Tom just headed out to take early-morning photos, and I am sitting here with my coffee considering how to organize my dinner-party preparations. First, I think, I'll set the focaccia to rise, and then I'll make the lemon custards and a tiny batch of blueberry jam to top them. Afterward, I'll marinate the flank steak, and the rest of the meal--roasted potatoes, tomato and green bean salad--can wait till later in the day.

But there's no rush for any of this. Yesterday I got the mowing and trimming done early, ran errands, planted fall crops (spinach, lettuce), dealt with some online stuff, bought bus tickets for my NYC trip, and even managed to type up a couple of notebook blurts and begin some revisions. I've been intensely engaged with Byatt's novels, and my spare minutes have been stuffed with greedy rereading. So, overall, it was a good Saturday--productive but also unstructured, and with plenty of time to get drunk on books.

The coming week will be busy. Lots of editing, page proofs to read, various meetings about upcoming teaching projects, my older boy and his partner swirling in for an overnight, plus all of the regular household demands. August is trickling away so quickly. 

By the way: there are only four spaces left in my November revision class, and the October class is entirely full. So if you're interested in working with me through the Poetry Kitchen this fall, you might want to sign up for a November space as I may not be able to offer another PK class till spring. Teresa and I will be leading an alumni session in January for the 2024 Conference on Poetry and Learning folks, and we are starting to cogitate about a multi-session poetic-research class for a spring PK offering. But I'm going to be involved, in some large way, with the Maine poet laureate's big statewide epistolary poetry project, so that is going to suck up a fair amount of time.

In person: Gretchen Berg and I will be team-teaching "Moving Bodies, Moving Words" on September 23 in Portland. That workshop will be free, and I'll have a link for you soon.

My book launch for Calendar will take place on October 17 at Back Cove Books in Portland. I'll also be reading at Carrabassett Valley Public Library with Maine's poet laureate, Julia Bouwsma, on November 16. I'm hoping to arrange a Zoom-based launch as well as other in-person readings and will keep you posted. 

If you have any interest in reviewing Calendar, let me know and I can send you a PDF of the page proofs this week. It would mean so much to me. It's really, really, really hard to get anyone to pay attention to a book without reviews. Obscurity has its charms, for sure. But it would be nice to have a taste of the other side, just once.