Monday, July 21, 2025

Yesterday we went to the Art Institute of Chicago, where I saw, for the first time, the permanent collection known as the Thorne Miniature Rooms. The link will tell you more about these displays, but essentially they are miniature replicas of period rooms representing various eras in (mostly) European and American history. Each is displayed as a glass-fronted box slid into the wall, allowing you to peer into into a dollhouse-sized, incredibly detailed room, with glimpses of linked rooms and gardens and street scenes beyond the room's windows. If you are a lover of the children's book The Borrowers, you will adore these rooms. I was entranced.

The photos on the website don't quite give the flavor of the effect of these rooms, partly because they simply look like photos of human-sized period replicas. In fact, most of the rooms are only about a foot square, but they have real parquet floors and actual little desks that lock and unlock and delicate curtains and perfectly turned staircases. Each space is filled with human presence, but there are no replicas of people, and that is part of the charm. They are spaces for imagining the story.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Yesterday was our big trip to Milwaukee to meet H's parents. Originally we'd planned to stay overnight, but hotel prices were too high, so we made a day of it instead--early lunch at a barbecue place, then a walk downtown along the river to look at the Fonzie statue, and finally a very amusing time mini-bowling at a neighborhood dive bar. It was the perfect way to meet new people--light-hearted and simple: the kind of arrangement that J is brilliant at. I don't know how he learned to be so excellently sociable; clearly not from his parents. But we are grateful for his sure touch.

No particular plans for today yet. At the moment I am the only person awake, though the cats are circling like sharks. We may end up at the Art Institute. We may check out the kids' wedding venue--an architectural restoration store that also hosts events. We may grill fish in the courtyard and play some more boardgames. I'm pretty sure we will not track down affordable tickets to the Sox-Cubs game. At the moment the locust trees beyond the alley are twitching in a steady breeze, and the sky is low and gray and rain-gloomy, though no rain is falling.

In the meantime I will sit here alone (except for ravenous cats) with nothing to do but half-doze, glance out the window at pigeons and trees, and read my book. A challenging schedule but I will persevere.

***

Oh, and today is our 34th wedding anniversary. The sentimental storylines are rife.

Saturday, July 19, 2025

 Good morning from Pilsen. From my window I am looking down over the alley behind my son's building--a clutter of tall weeds, garages, fences, power poles, garbage cans . . . what Dickens calls a mews in his novels. Rock doves coo in a local gutter. Massive fringed locust trees line the street beyond the alley. Most of the buildings around here are brick--some red, some yellow, and often exuding a rundown European flare, given that the majority date from the early twentieth century, when Pilsen was a Czech enclave. Since then, demographics have switched to mostly Michoacan Mexican, and many of these old Eastern European-style buildings are painted with murals depicting Mexican American history and culture. The effect is jaunty.

Yesterday J, T, and I went to the Lincoln Park zoo and saw some excellent giraffes and a green broadbill that might be the greenest thing I have ever witnessed. 



Then we walked to the lakefront and drank beer and ate loaded fries in a silly beach bar and stared out at the umbrellas and the volleyball players and the jet skiers and the lifeguards and the splashers and the sandcastle makers before wending back to Pilsen for afternoon naps.


J owns a tiny compound composed of a building with two rental apartments on the street side, the carriage house where he lives on the alley side, and a little plant-festooned concrete and decking oasis between them, like a snug secret garden. In the evening we sat around in the courtyard until we got hungry, then strolled down the street to a tent where a man was cooking tacos and ordered a dozen to carry back to the house. The air was soft and pleasant, cicadas buzzing and humming in the locust trees. Our tacos were a sort of heaven, and then we played a board game, and eased our way into sleep.

This visit to Chicago has been exactly what we needed . . . lots of wandering, lots of idle talk, little responsibility. Today we are going on an adventure to Milwaukee to meet H's parents. It seems that Milwaukee is full of strange and varied bowling alleys, and J has reserved us a lane at a tiny place with actual live pinsetters. I am quite looking forward to it.

Friday, July 18, 2025

Our plane was delayed in Portland so we didn't get into Chicago till after 11, which was midnight eastern time. And then we stayed up to eat dinner and visit with the kids, so that accounts for why I'm only waking up now. House is already busy and chattery, so writing is hard. Talk to you tomorrow!

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Another torrid night, another sticky morning, and birdsong is such a balm.

This evening we'll be flying to Chicago, so this will be my last home morning for a few days. As a routine, nothing could be less spectacular--sitting alone on a couch at daybreak with a cup of coffee--yet such dim little habits are what soothe me into and out of the clatter of the world. Now, upstairs, the bed creaks; I hear Tom beginning to open and close drawers, hear the thud of his bare feet on the floorboards . . . the workday is yawning and blinking, and soon I will lift my face from these words and turn toward my beloved's smile.

We are looking forward to our travels, which, as travels go, should be easy. We're flying out of Portland, so no connecting bus to Boston, no wanderings through massive barracks. A friend will pick us up at the house and within ten minutes drop us off at the little Jetport, with its mod name and miniature halls. We'll fly directly to Midway, avoiding the angsts of O'Hare, and our son will be there to greet us. The trip sounds so simple, like wafting. I hope it really will be.

So tomorrow morning I will write to you from the urban thickets of the Midwest . . . sausage city, prairie town, big hick burg trembling under the endless rattle of the El. You know the legend, and some of it is true. I'll let you in on some other stories as I bump into them. What I do know: The Red Sox will be playing against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. People will be grilling hotdogs by the big lake. Cats will be a large topic of conversation. I will regret my ignorance of Spanish.

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

A moment ago I switched off the noisy a/c, and now the house is flooded with birdsong. The neighborhood is very quiet, more like a Sunday morning than a weekday. Summer rhythms . . . yesterday the high school girl who lives across the street lay on her stomach in a strip of grass reading, reading, reading, and I thought I might cry from the sweetness of it. Though of course most anything can make me cry these days. I am leaking tears, just as I did in the months around our move from Harmony. "Don't mind me," I used to tell people. "This always happens."

Still, despite the constant slow drip, I'm getting used to Ruckus's absence--to sitting outside without him, to climbing into bed without him. I can't help but imagine how angry he'd be, watching me manage. He had zero confidence in my survival skills.

Yesterday morning, before the heat kicked in, I worked in the garden--planted second-crop greens, did some weeding, ran the trimmer. Today I'll meet a friend for a walk, then do a bit more weeding, and eventually return to desk obligations as the day warms. I'm waiting for a big new editing project to appear. I've got prep to do for my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class. I suppose I could try out a poem draft, but writing the cat's obituary seems to have sapped my fluency. Unfortunately I'll miss my Thursday poetry group this week as that's the night we're flying out to Chicago. So the only words available will be the ones I stumble over on my own.

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

I thought maybe yesterday would be an easier day, emotionally, but it wasn't. It was the first day I'd been alone in the house since Ruckus's death, and his absence was everywhere. He was such a social being, always making sure he knew where I was, always close by, whether inside or outside. Without his company, the house and garden feel dead.

I know I'll get over this sensation eventually. So I'm still plodding away at my chores and pretending that I care about them, because one of these days I really will care again. And I know I ought to get another cat sooner rather than later. It's better for me to have a little someone to tend and fuss over.

But this week is not the week. I will continue my sad round for a few more days, and then we'll fly to Chicago into the embrace of our kids and their three rowdy cats, and when I'm home again I'll figure out what to do next.

This morning I'll get into the garden . . . tear out peavines and sow kale seed and salad greens, prune and stake tomato plants, do some weeding and mowing and trimming, and otherwise ready the beds for a few days on their own.

One bit of good news is that my younger son's health issues seem to be abating. In the summers he leads wilderness canoe trips in northern Ontario, but this season has been tough. He started off with a bad ear infection, then had to be evacuated from his trip after he was stricken with full-body hives. The med staff can't figure out what triggered anaphylaxis; best guess is a bite or a sting exacerbated by stress over Ruckus's death. In any case, it was a scary situation, handled deftly. By the time I learned about it (yes, during the conference and, jeez, how much can one person compartmentalize while trying to do a hard job?), he was on a cocktail of meds and responding well, and yesterday he cheerfully told me that they were bringing him back to his campers and he would continue the trip.

No option but to trust. The staff are well trained in wilderness medical emergencies. All I can do is wish him bon voyage.

Monday, July 14, 2025

Almost imperceptibly the early mornings are becoming darker. At 5 a.m., I turn on a lamp and peer into a garden of shadows. A robin sings andante. Heavy air leans a cheek against the open windows.

Last night I slept, really slept, for the first time in more than a week. Writing Ruckus's obituary was a help in that regard, as I knew it would be. When I sent copies to my sons, both were relieved--not just because they were pleased with what I had said but because they knew that framing words around his death would carry me forward.

I wrote the obituary, and then I reread it about a hundred times, off and on throughout the day. That, too, was helpful. Ruckus has entered the land of legend. When the new stories end, the old stories step into their power.

So this morning I feel ready to turn to other responsibilities: post-conference paperwork, unpacking books,  catching up on housework. Because of my state of mind--because I had to compartmentalize my grief so strictly last week--I couldn't keep you apprised of how well the conference was going. In truth, it was transformative. Bringing in Gretchen and Gwyneth, expanding our learning into body-thought, had a tremendous influence on the collaborative projects that the participants created. I heard new freedoms in their poem drafts, in their conversations. I felt these new freedoms in myself and in the collaborative lessons that Teresa and I were constructing on the fly. We left the conference with a great sense of anticipation.

I don't know what will happen next year in Monson. But I am already excited.

On Thursday evening Tom and I will fly to Chicago to spend a few days with our beloveds. Given our newly lonely household, the timing is good, despite the breathlessness of shifting so quickly from one sort of travel to another. In the meantime, I will try to learn to be without my dear little noisemaker. I will try to look inside myself, outside myself. The days march on.

* * *

During the conference, I received notification that one of my essays appears in Vox Populi's list of most-read works. I wrote this piece quite a while ago, when my younger son was still in high school. It was strange to revisit it.

Sunday, July 13, 2025

 


Ruckus Plantagenet Ozymandias Xerxes Van Pelt, king of Maine, died unexpectedly on July 8 after suffering a blood clot. He was thirteen years old.

Ruckus was born on the Ides of March, somewhere near Bangor, Maine. His parentage is murky, but reputably he was half Siamese, half Russian oligarch. He spent his formative years in the town of Harmony, where, under the tutelage of his adoptive mother, Anna the standard poodle, he learned much about the wiles of chipmunks and developed his taste for large social gatherings.

Midlife, after moving grouchily to Portland, he discovered new horizons. Though he had spent his early years as a country cat, he stepped into the role of neighborhood icon with confidence and aplomb. With his across-the-street friend Jack “The Block Captain” Glessner, he founded the Neighborhood Bratz, and together they adventured into other people’s garages, snubbed small dogs, and posed for countless album photos on the hoods of cars. 

Ruckus was filled with grievance and vanity, and he was always eager to share these talents with his fans. His charisma and self-satisfaction were boundless. While he hated art, especially poetry, he was always gracious when a fan composed a song about him (for instance, the well-known pop tune “Construction Cat,” in which he wears a cravat and berates his employees) and enjoyed starring in the limited-edition comic book series Cat of Action. At the time of his death, he was in talks with Marvel about taking control of the universe.

Ruckus had many talents. He clawed furniture and smeared dress shirts with hair. He was an impeccable alarm clock, always set too early. He was a champion sulker and bigmouth, with a yowl that could stop traffic. His family still wears the scars of his claws. With such skills, he even began influencing the past: the 1960s Mission: Impossible team often consulted his string expertise, and Leonard Nimoy frequently mentioned how much better Ruckus would have been in the role of Captain Kirk.

Despite constant publicity, Ruckus loved his home and was deeply committed to his family and friends. High summer was his favorite season, and nothing made him cozier than family time, when he would bask in the grass as his loved ones sat around eating or cooking or playing cards. Yet he equally adored watching them get sweaty and exasperated and was sure to be nearby if they were digging a big hole or struggling with a flat tire. There is even a rumor that he invented Covid-19 so that his family would stop going to work. His dream was to convince all of his young people to move back in with their parents and set up beds in every room of the house. 

Ruckus was bossy, loud, and annoying. Everything was always about him. He was the life of the party, and his absence has left an enormous gulf. He is deeply mourned by his immediate family—Dawn, Tom, Lily, Paul, Hannah, and James—as well as his broader family circle, his neighbors, and his imaginary celebrity girlfriends. He was predeceased by his mother, Anna, and his best friend, Jack. Perhaps the three of them are in paradise together, all staring fixedly into the same chipmunk hole and ignoring the angels who are calling them home for dinner.

Saturday, July 12, 2025

The lake is pure fog this morning--no distinction between water and sky, a flat wall rather than a horizon.

Today, after lunch, I'll head back to Portland, and to the empty place in our house.

It's been a beautiful conference week, despite my personal sorrows. I will write about it more. Thanks for being patient.

Friday, July 11, 2025

I got through the day by strict compartmentalizing . . . please, do not talk to me today about my cat . . . and that allowed people to forget to feel sad for me and so move on constructively into their day. It allowed me not to be leaking tears all day, allowed me to laugh and tease as necessary, allowed me to stay out late at the conference dance party, allowed me to come back to my cabin sweaty and panting, allowed me to sleep for more than the two hours I'd snared the night before.

At some point next week I will write an obituary for my beloved king of Maine. He was a public character, and he deserves a public memorial.

Poor Tom is home alone in the bereft house. It is not so easy to cloak sorrow when one is in the place where the life was lived.

Thank you to all who sent me little notes.


Thursday, July 10, 2025

Last night I got back to the cabin after Teresa's wonderful reading and found a message from Tom that he had to have our cat put down. 

A blood clot, untreatable.

Dear Ruckus. I will write a better memorial than this when I can.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Rain last night, and this morning the grass hill that rolls down to the lake is quivering with water drops that are just beginning to catch the edge of sunlight.

I had my reading last night, and I hope it went well, I think it did. I read poems I've never read in public before, and may never again . . . it's always interesting, at these conferences, how I feel driven to treat readings in such a different way. In a way I'm relieved not to be hawking Calendar so directly. Yet I lay myself open when I risk reading these new and not necessarily crowd-pleasing pieces. All I can do is hope for the best.

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Yesterday's dance and collaborative theater session was so wonderful: rigorous, hilarious, absorbing, and beautifully awkward. I was recalling afterward how much I appreciate being put into awkward positions . . . yes, it can be uncomfortable, but as one of the participants said, it helps him remember how awkward others may feel when confronted with words. Our own fluencies can blind us.

And Gretchen and Gwynnie are such good teachers: always expecting the best, always forgiving imperfection; process and process and process . . . the deep joy of the making.

It was a risk to bring non-writing artists into a poetry conference, but I'm so glad I did. They have illuminated so much about collaboration and trust and adventure and play.

* * *

Tonight I'll be reading, 7 p.m., at Tenney House, with backup from Teresa on a few poems that we're going to experiment with chorally.

Monday, July 7, 2025

Last night a storm whipped through, but now at daybreak the lake is hazed and glassy, the birches as still as listeners. Bullfrogs belch, blackbirds whistle; and somewhere, invisible in the ring of trees, a pileated woodpecker emits its harsh antique warning.

I live alone in this cabin. Each morning this week I will wake to this private view, this northern lake, with its fringe of mountains, with its dots of cottages peeking among the water-rim trees. It is not a lonely place. Monday-morning trucks cruise steadily north and south, heading to work in Greenville or Dover-Foxcroft, hauling loads to Skowhegan or Rumford or Bangor. Yet even though I can hear the traffic, the cabin feels separate from that busyness . . . tucked away, a secret.

I work hard at this conference, but I also have real time off: moments like now, this sweet lonesome hour: this lake, so quiet, a mirror of rest. In a few minutes all this will change: Teresa will pop around the corner of the cabin, I'll get up to pour her coffee, and we'll dive into the minutiae of "How do you think yesterday went?" and "What do we need to remember for today?" and the lonesome hour will shatter into the absorptions of the day.

Yesterday went well, I think. I began by dictating a tiny poem by Paul Celan and then giving a writing prompt. We talked about the specificity of how Celan controlled the transmitted emotions of the poem. Then we read an Anne Sexton poem and I offered a writing prompt that led, among other things, to a discussion of structure and a poet's signature moves, and eventually small groups worked on constructing their own questions and prompts. Then in the evening everyone shared two favorite poems by other poets, an event that turned out to be extremely moving, and a new way to get to know one another: by the tremble in our voices when we read aloud what we love.

I take such pleasure in doing this work, such pleasure in watching tension shift from shoulders and faces as the poets settle into the serious play of the conference, into the serious dedicated richness of this small age we spend together.

But I am glad to be alone for a few more minutes, watching low clouds bumble against the blue-gray ridge beyond the lake.

* * *

Tonight's collaborative faculty showcase: Gwyneth Jones has choreographed a dance to a poem by Gretchen Berg, which she will perform to several different accompaniments, one of which will be me on violin. Gwynnie and Gretchen will also be showing clips of larger works they've done together in the past, and then will invite the audience into impromptu participation as well. Performance takes place in Tenney House, 7 p.m., and is free and open to the public.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

 

And this is my daybreak.

I sit alone on the cabin's deck. Below me bullfrogs burp in the weeds. A red-winged blackbird whistles and fizzes. Last night at dusk I heard loons, but this morning they are quiet.

Beside me: a mug of steaming black coffee and a backpack stuffed with plans. So far, only one mosquito has wandered by.

This will be a long and intense and exciting and draining day. Sitting here is a good way to start.

Saturday, July 5, 2025

Of course I'm awake too early, and of course I'm nervy and jangled, but that's to be expected. And luckily the morning is soothing--gray light, gull cry, hoot of a passing train, cardinals a-chitter in the trees, air cool and clean. Yesterday was the final chore sweep--cleaning the car, mowing grass, packing, watering, prepping today's lunch, making lists for Tom--and now my bags stand by the front door, now I've only got a few last-minute items to pull together, and then I'll wait for Teresa's text from the airport, and then the adventure will begin.

I've been directing or assisting at some version of this conference for fifteen years now, and still every departure morning feels momentous. There's no other week in my year like it. It has been an incredible gift--this annual opportunity to construct a gathering that is at once free-wheeling and focused, vast and intimate. It is also such hard, hard work. Since last summer Teresa and I have constantly been meeting and cogitating about this week--building and unbricking and building again. We pore over every aspect of the schedule, we tweak and re-tweak, we unroll blueprints of mysterious castles and plot charts into unknown forests . . . And now we are ready to open the curtain and invite our small troupe into the play. You see how the mixed metaphors fly! And why not? There is room for all of them at this party.

One of the things I need to do this morning is to cut flowers for decorating the Monson Arts meeting space, and my neighbor has generously offered up her roses and hydrangeas, which are huge and glorious and overflowing. I'll attempt to get a walk in as well . . . it's not always easy to count on regular exercise when I'm on the job, though Teresa and I do try. One great help is Monson Arts itself. The place takes such good care of us: excellent meals, excellent housing, excellent staff support. Our only responsibility is our invention.

You may or may not hear from me this week. I'm not going to berate myself if I can't find the headspace to write a daily note, but on the other hand I might be eager to chatter. Thanks for your forebearance . . . I will see you on the other side.

Friday, July 4, 2025

The neighborhood is very quiet this morning. People have vanished for the long weekend; people are sleeping in on their day off. The only person I've seen so far is the man who combs recycling bins for returnables, rattling up with his bike and dragging a shopping cart. We say good morning, we chat about the time and about coffee. Then he continues his rounds, and I amble back down the driveway. There, the cat, drunk on cool air and lying in wait, leaps out at me from under the truck, swarms four feet up a tree trunk, pauses in confusion, awkwardly backs down, and strolls away, metaphorically whistling as he goes. I'm not dead under a bush are the lyrics of his tune. Life is so ruthlessly alive.

I have many jobs to do today--grass mowing and trimming, vacuuming the car, packing, prepping tomorrow's lunch, plus dealing with regular laundry and meal chores. Teresa and her husband are vegan, so I've decided to fix a Korean summer noodle dish that we can eat before we drive up to Monson tomorrow. For tonight I've got chicken for the firepit, to be marinated with lemon, oil, garlic scapes, and oregano. The city fireworks are usually visible from our street, so maybe we'll sit out on the curb this evening to watch. It's hard to dredge up enthusiasm, though. There's not much to celebrate in America.

Still, I cannot enter into conference week with a defeated mind. I am too responsible for other people. I owe them more than gloom and cynicism. I owe poetry more than that as well. As the goons jackhammer the nation, our small circles embrace, our small flames glow. We are afraid, but we are not quenched.

Thank you to all of the familiar beloveds, to all of the soon-to-be friends, who are trustfully wending their way to the north country to spend a week immersed in that glow. Thank you to the beloveds who hold the fort at home, honoring our commitment and our need. Thank you to the wider circle of friends and neighbors and family members who text good wishes for the week, or feed our pets and water our plants, or promise eagerly to attend one of the performances, or wistfully wish they could be with us, or send us dumb cat photos in the middle of the night. Thank you to the readers of these daily missives, for your loyalty, for your curiosity, for your patience with my maundering missteps, for your sweet voices in the comments.

Under the jackhammer's clamor, I hear you singing.

Thursday, July 3, 2025

When high summer starts kicking in, my cooking improves tremendously. Even in a bad garden year (and this is one), I've got armloads of fresh herbs, and at the moment I'm also harvesting young red onions, garlic scapes, a few peas, and salad greens, and I have access to local fruit, corn, and fish. Last night's meal was a treat from beginning to end. I roasted two small whole mackerel ($4.99 a pound at the fish market; a steal!), first salting and olive-oiling them and stuffing them with fresh oregano, lemon thyme, and slices of lime; then serving them with a yogurt-parsley sauce. On the side, two salads: one, corn with roasted onions and peppers and fresh cilantro; the other, sliced beets with green onion, tiny peas, garlic scapes, mint, and salad greens. For dessert: a version of a Neapolitan--scoops of homemade chocolate and vanilla ice cream topped with fresh strawberries. It was a really, really good dinner.

Otherwise, the day was full of this-and-thats, with the big event being the dance rehearsal up at Bowdoin. If you are within travel distance of Monson Arts, you're invited to join us for the faculty performances, all of which will take place at Tenney House, all of which are free and open to the public and begin at 7 p.m. As you know, this year’s conference theme is collaboration, and each of the performances will feature faculty working together to create collaborative art. Here's the schedule:

July 7: Gretchen Berg, poet, and Gwyneth Jones, dancer (accompanied by Dawn Potter, fiddle)

July 8: Dawn Potter, poet (accompanied by Teresa Carson, reader)

July 9: Teresa Carson, poet (accompanied by Dawn Potter, reader)

Preparing for these performances has been so interesting and absorbing, and every day I've been getting more and more excited about the conference. All four of the faculty members have completely embraced the notion of collaboration in our design of teaching sessions and performances, and planning for this has been challenging and fascinating and exciting. Teaching, at its best, is a deeply creative act, and working with these incredible colleagues has invigorated me so much. I can't wait to welcome our participants into this delight. 

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Yesterday was a pretty bad day. In the morning, when I was in the garden trying to beat the heat before retreating to my desk, I thought I heard a meow. So I crossed the street to investigate and discovered Jack's body in the bushes.

That darkened the day, and the Senate darkened the day, and then last night a bat flew into our bedroom, with chaos ensuing, forcing T and me to hunt for what little sleep we could get on couches downstairs. T did leave the bedroom window open and the door shut, hoping that the bat would find his way out . . . which we thought he had, until I pulled up the shade this morning and the bat fell on my shoulder.

It's a good thing the neighbors all have their air conditioners running because they would surely have heard my bloodcurdling shriek and assumed that a terrible crime was taking place.

But the bat did fly out through the window, and T thinks he's finally figured out where they've been getting in and will patch it tonight. So that's a speck of good news.

Today I'm going up to Bowdoin to rehearse for the Monson performance, and I'll squeeze in various chores around the edges--garden, house, groceries, packing. Yesterday I did manage to get the bulk of the editing project done, despite the Jack tragedy. Still, I'm tireder than I'd like to be, and sad, and angry, and still kind of freaked out about having a bat fall on me.


Tuesday, July 1, 2025

There's great sadness in the neighborhood: Jack, the across-the-street cat I was babysitting last week, hasn't been seen since Friday. A few days after his family got home from vacation, he just disappeared. We're all checking our sheds and garages, but everyone fears the worst. Despite his misanthropy, Jack is very popular, and his loss is a sorrow, not least for my cat Ruckus, his best friend. Over the years the two of them have had many nosy adventures together, and we are all grieved.

Today is the first of July, and the gray dawn air is thick and still and hazy. A robin trills. A train hoots. Temperatures are forecast to rise into the mid-80s, so I'm going to try to get a few garden chores done early in the day and then retreat indoors. With exquisitely bad timing, an editing project dropped on my desk yesterday, giving me one more thing to shoehorn among the other this-n-thats. But I really want to get it done before I leave, if I can. With that trip to Chicago looming later in the month, my schedule will only get more awkward.

So today: garden, violin, editing, laundry, paperwork, lists lists lists . . . tomorrow I'll be at Bowdoin, rehearsing for the Monson performance . . . I should comb through my teaching plans again . . . I've got to go for a walk; I haven't taken one for two days . . . and what will I make for dinner? . . . and poor Jack is gone . . . Sigh.

Monday, June 30, 2025

And here we are again, back to Monday. But it will be an odd melded week . . . starting short, with a holiday on Friday; then immediately becoming long, with a Saturday-to-Saturday gig in Monson.

This week will be a flurry of get-ready-go tasks--not just paperwork, practice, packing, and readying house and garden for my absence but also my annual wash-and-vacuum-the-car-so-I-can-ferry-poets-without-embarrassment chore. Plus, yesterday evening, after a weekend of houseguests and bookless play, I suddenly fell straight down a reading/research rabbit hole involving the early poetry of Ted Hughes, Robert Graves's The White Goddess, D. H. Lawrence's novels, midcentury writers' (both male and female) absorption of the myth of the Muse, and how all of this linked to sexual, marital, and artistic imbalances among a swath of couples of the era, especially those who never became famous or even serious practitioners but were nonetheless bitten by notions that they couldn't recover from.

An unwieldy topic, involving heavy reading, family and literary history, and a totally unclear writing project, none of which I have leisure to pursue. And yet here it is in my lap. Goddamn that Muse.

Well, anyway, I scribbled a lot of notes last night, and maybe that will keep the pot at a low boil while I'm distracted by obligation. Or maybe I'll discover a pinhole leak in the kettle, and all of my excitement will drain away, and the fire will go out, and the Muse will go back to snorting in her tent.

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Yesterday turned out to be 100% rainy-day play. First, we walked out to buy a box of excellent French-bakery croissants for breakfast. Then my sister and I made a cherry pie together. Then T and I taught H and K how to play the board game Wingspan, which they loved. Then we went candlepin bowling at lanes that had been preserved in their original 1960s glory . . . paper scoring! curved aqua plastic benches! cheap prices! Then we went out for a big sushi dinner. Then we played another round of Wingspan. Then we ate pie. Then we fell into bed exhausted from hours of fluffy fun.

It's been so lovely having them here, so good to spend our weekend together actively amusing ourselves instead of devolving into family frets and chores. This morning everyone (even me, briefly) is sleeping late. Then we'll figure out some sort of breakfast, and H and K will pull themselves together and start heading back to Vermont, and T and I will slip back into our usual sort of Sunday.

I haven't cracked a book for 36 hours. It's been great.

***

There's only one space left in the August Poetry Kitchen class. If you're interested in the topic but that weekend doesn't work for you, let me know. I've had some people ask about scheduling a second session, early in the fall. If you'd like to join them, I'll start figuring out dates.

Saturday, June 28, 2025

For the first time in years my sister and brother-in-law have managed to make it to Portland to spend a weekend with us. Previous planned visits have been derailed by so many things--illness, issues with our parents, weather--and this one very nearly went off the rails too. But finally success! and last night the four of us sat around the fire cooking, drinking wine, chattering, and I was just so happy to have this circle in my little summer green space.

This morning the rain has already moved in, and I doubt we'll get much opportunity to hike. We've talked about going bowling or going to the movies, and my sister brought two quarts of sour cherries from her backyard tree, so I think she and I will make a pie this morning. I bet we'll play cards or a board game at some point, and we've got dinner reservations at a sushi place downtown. And the chatter will go on and on . . . talking is what my sister and I do best together.

For the moment, though, everything is quiet. T is still abed upstairs, H and K are still asleep in the back room, the cat has already bounced outside and back and returned himself to slumber, and I am tucked into my couch corner as the rain-lit day yawns and stretches.

This time next week I will be readying myself for travel: gathering my bags and boxes, fretting about picking up Teresa at the airport, trying to put together a quick sociable lunch before we head north, then stepping straight into the intensity of poets and need. So even though I've got houseguests this weekend, I'm trying to think of it as a version of rest, and it is: no weeding and mowing, no scribbling or panicking; just, hmm, where's a good place to look at the ocean in the rain?

And I love these long moments of house quiet . . . knowing that rooms are filled with sleepers, sighs rising and falling around me, and my private self glowing inside its frail lonesome crystal.

Friday, June 27, 2025

It's actually cold in Portland this morning--52 degrees and I am wrapped in my red bathrobe and gratefully sipping hot coffee. Meanwhile, my garden reels. Fried on Tuesday, shivering on Friday: the plants are clearly struggling to cope with a 50-degree temperature swing.

Well, I did my best yesterday, weeding and watering and coddling, and maybe tomorrow's rain will be a balm.

With houseguests on the way today, that will be my focus: figuring out meals, making up the bed, and such. But I did dig a couple of not-dreadful drafts out of last night's writing prompts and might try to snatch an hour to revisit them. I've been writing badly all week so was greatly relieved to suddenly not be.

Still, poems cannot be first this weekend. My sister is not at all literary, and there will be no discussions of books or art, no holing up in our own corners with fat novels. We will be all talk and action, flailing our pikes on a rainy day.

Thursday, June 26, 2025

First thing this morning I opened a window and cool air floated into the bedroom. Instantly I turned off fans and a/c and the house flooded with quiet. Of course I've been grateful for the machines, but the racket is exhausting in its own right. Those window units are so loud.

After two days in the 90s, we're supposed to have highs in the 50s and 60s for the rest of the week, a bizarre reprise of our cold spring. No wonder my vegetable garden looks shell-shocked.

At least I'll be able to spend time outside today. I've got to mow and trim; I ought to weed as well, and I need to finish up the weekly housework. If all goes well (read: no new parent emergencies), my sister and brother-in-law will be arriving tomorrow to spend the weekend with us. Of course it's supposed to rain, but at least the streets won't be melting in the heat.

I'm starting to have stress dreams about Monson--a whole night spent moving furniture around and around the conference room. No matter how organized I pretend to be, my subconscious would like to remind me that really I am a ball of chaos.

Tonight I'll go out to write, which I hope will distract my brain from conference panic . . . and also give me some better poem starts. I have been writing dreadful drafts this week, one dog after another. I think the heat addled my imagination.

**

By the way: there are only two spaces left in my August Poetry Kitchen class. Grab one now while you can.

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Yesterday was brutally hot: 99 degrees in Portland, the highest temperature I can ever remember experiencing in Maine. Yet the gardens managed to look enticing, and they kept me wandering from shut window to shut window, as if I were Rapunzel's mother peering out into the witch's backyard.

Periodically I ventured into the oven--hanging clothes, filling the birdbath, watering flowerpots. I even carried my breakfast and lunch outside into the "shade." But the enjoyment was all visual. This is a nasty heatwave, of the sort that feels life-threatening, and I hate that Tom has to work in it.


Today should be marginally cooler, but the heat won't really break until tomorrow. Still, I hope to get out for an early walk before shutting myself up again with books and housework. I wrote a terrible poem draft yesterday, but maybe I will have better luck today. And I did force myself to send out a couple of submissions.

This time next week I will be on the downslide to the conference. I can hardly believe it's happening again, though year after year it does--that intense miracle week; that work. I feel like my body is holding its breath, waiting.

Tuesday, June 24, 2025


It's rose season in Maine, and the bushes are loaded this year. My neighbor's old rose, which may be almost a hundred years old, is always a heavy bloomer, but this year it's so massive that she's asked me to cut flowers as a way to keep them from overtaking her walkway and front steps. So now my vases are overflowing with roses, and the house is overflowing with fragrance.

At the moment all of the house windows are open to the cool air, but that will soon change. Temperatures are forecast to rocket into the mid-90s today, and I am going to have to be grateful for a/c. But for another hour or so I can allow the summer air to linger.

The animals are busy in this brief hiatus between night and heat. A raccoon moseys through the backyard and dumps over a flowerpot. A robin sings on a shed roof. A squirrel excavates among spindly pepper plants.

Yesterday I set my desk-self up at the outside table and spent a couple of hours on the phone with Teresa, combing through every aspect of our conference plans as neighbors' air conditioners dripped and spat, cardinals pewed, chipmunks skittered, and the fat white cat flopped dramatically in the grass at my feet. I suppose I'll be boxed up in the house today, which is too bad as I've been very much enjoying the al fresco life.

Oddly, while Teresa and I were talking, my phone kept pinging "email, email," and when I looked later I discovered that I'd received two journal acceptances--both for what I suspected might be unpublishable poems. One of the submissions is very long and very literary, a combination that is always hard to place. The other, a persona poem, features a young central Maine speaker who may or may not be considering abortion--a situation that does not automatically appeal to gatekeepers. As you know, I hardly submit anything these days, and when I do I tend to send to journals that are already familiar with my work. So I was surprised, and of course pleased, to learn that both of these weirdo pieces would enter the conversation, and both in places where my work does not typically appear.

Monday, June 23, 2025

Yesterday was hot, but still I kept the windows open, even overnight. I think today may also be tolerable, but the scorch is arriving tomorrow and eventually I'll have to break down and turn on the a/c.

T and I spent a lot of time in the yard this weekend--meals and cards at the outdoor tables, books in the chairs and the hammock, cooking at the fire pit. On Saturday night we walked to a Sea Dogs game (Mikey Romero: grand slam!); on Sunday I went for a walk with a friend and T went for a bike ride. But I didn't do a ton of garden work: mostly I just enjoyed hanging around among the plants and flowers.

But now we've returned to Monday. Upstairs T is creaking back and forth over the squeaky floor, chunking his dresser drawers shut, musing for a moment at the bedroom window. Outside a squirrel chatters and scolds.

First thing this morning I'll walk with another friend, and then Teresa and I will meet for our final conference planning session: we'll go through the schedule item by item, double-check every session syllabus, work out presentation and performance issues, make checklists of materials, fret about travel and timing and luggage. Naturally I'll have overlooked something and will start panicking. But that's always the way.

Meanwhile, Alcott House is cool and dim this morning . . . roses and yarrow glowing on the shadowed mantlepiece, fans hushed, birdsong pouring through the screens, air caressing my bare shoulders.

I have been writing a poem about war.

Sunday, June 22, 2025

I've had something on my mind for the past day, which maybe doesn't need explication, but then again maybe it does.

This will be my second summer conference away from the Frost Place, yet for a variety of reasons--nearly all of them involving other people's privacy--I haven't talked directly on this blog about my reasons for leaving my position and the result of that departure on the conference and myself. I'm still not going to talk publicly about the minutiae of why I resigned, other than to say that I remain on cordial terms with past and current staff and was in fact invited last fall to bring the conference back to the Frost Place.

I worked for more than a decade as the director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching (and served for longer than that as associate director, visiting faculty, and participant in various programs). During Covid, I co-founded and directed the online Frost Place Studio Sessions, which allowed me to step more fully into the teaching of poetry rather than focusing primarily on the teaching of teachers. These were incredible opportunities. No other poetry program of such stature would have likely offered me these chances, given my lack of a master's degree and my quiet presence on any kind of national stage.

I will always cherish the Frost Place, always miss it. That said, over time my experiences there had come to resemble those of that well-known allegorical frog in boiling water. I was doing my jobs; I was doing other people's jobs; I was constantly smothering fires of one sort or another, and yet the conflagration would not be quenched. The situation was untenable, but still I kept at it because I couldn't imagine what my life would be without the Frost Place.

Finally, two summers ago, I had to face the truth. The conference was no longer a good fit for the Frost Place. With trepidation, I reached out to the administrators at Monson Arts with a proposal for a new version of my long-running program. And they welcomed me in.

***

This summer Monson Arts will host the second Conference on Poetry and Learning. The change in name--from teaching to learning--was deliberate. While the older version of the conference had been founded specifically for teachers, this one would work to draw in a larger variety of participants: teachers, yes, but also poets and other seekers who don't center their work in a classroom. Another major change was that suddenly Robert Frost was no longer our mage; this means that his work is no longer the centerpiece. Finally, Monson Arts is not a poetry center, as the Frost Place is. It's an arts center.

All of these shifts have allowed me to radically enhance the content of the program, even while retaining its familiar intimate, collegial character. In short, I have become a far better teacher since I moved the program to Monson.

The setting is very different from the Frost Place. But on every metric it is more comfortable: excellent on-campus housing, world-class food, a clean and inviting classroom space. For long-distance travelers, it's equivalently annoying to get to . . . but not more annoying. Instead of the White Mountains, we've got a gorgeous lake and the Hundred Mile Wilderness. 

A number of Frost Place alums have made the move to Monson with me. Yet I get the sense that a few are speaking as if the program no longer exists--as if its glory years are behind it; as if all we have are memories. This makes me sad because it's so completely untrue.

In fact, the move has energized me. It has also shown me what I wasn't able to do before: focus 100% of my attention on the well-being of the program, the participants, and our art. For this summer's session Teresa and I, along with our guest faculty, have constructed a free-wheeling, intense, interwoven schedule focusing on collaboration across artistic disciplines, across history, across selves. It's been enormously intellectually challenging . . . and thus entirely thrilling. I would not have had the time, the financial support, or the physical space to undertake such a project at the Frost Place. But Monson Arts has opened these doors for the conference.

This letter, too, is open, so if you know anyone who needs to read it, please share. I have been distressed, perhaps needlessly, about mistaken assumptions. The Conference on Poetry and Learning is thriving at Monson Arts. I welcome you to join us there.

Saturday, June 21, 2025


Neighborhood stories: Let's start with this young man. On Thursday morning I looked up from my book and  he was staring through the living-room window at me. I know deer frequently travel through farther-flung neighborhoods, areas closer to the city's forest trail system, but no one in our more urban setting has ever seen a deer here before. Tom glimpsed him again that evening, but since then no more sightings. Let's hope he's found his way back to the woods.

And then there's Jack, the cat who lives across the street and who is my baby-sitting charge for the next few days. In a classic cat bribery scheme, he convinced the wind to suddenly blow open the back door I'd just walked through and instantly made his escape. Jack is a hardened outdoorsman so I wasn't too worried, and in fact he did return for recapture later that morning but, jeesh, cats. Today he won't find me so soft.

Jack is a well-known local eccentric. When I asked my next-door neighbor to keep me posted if she saw him, she rolled her eyes without worry: we all know that Jack will do whatever Jack wants. There's community comfort in our mild gossip about weirdos such as Jack, the world's nosiest civil servant, always prying into everyone else's business . . . but do not try to pet him. Nothing insults him more.

Meanwhile, the weather! What a day we had yesterday--soft swirling wind, bright sunshine, perfect temperatures. I decided to do no garden work but take a day to enjoy the space: sit among the flowers, wander my small pathways, lean back and stare up into the canopy, listen to birdsong. I wrote two poem drafts; I practiced the violin. It was a perfect day.

What's more, Jack's family gets a farmshare delivery once a week, which they couldn't use this time so asked if I'd like it. You know how slow my vegetable garden has been this spring, and I was thrilled. Unpacking the box was like getting a Christmas present in June: new potatoes, beets and beet greens, chard, kale, lemon balm, dill, lettuce, even a celeriac. Last night we ate marinated flank steak with baby herbed potatoes alongside roasted greens--a big plate of summer . . . windows open, neighborhood babies cooing, and on the radio the Yankees losing to the Orioles.

Yes, yes, you know I miss Harmony; you know central Maine is my homeland; you know all about my forever woods loneliness. But gosh: there are days when I am floored by this place where I so reluctantly ended up. Deering Center, land of tiny lush gardens and tree-shaded sidewalks; its staid domestic history--rows of close-set family houses, most built between the 1890s and the 1930s (with a few 1940s interlopers such as my own). In the summer evenings the air rings with the sounds of big kids playing foursquare in the streets, toddlers cackling in the yards. Neighbors actually lean over the fences to talk to one another. It is like living in a My Three Sons episode.

Friday, June 20, 2025

The house windows were open all night, and I woke to robin song--trill, burble, and question; trill, burble, and question; again and again and again.

It is a warm and humid dawn. I suppose we will have to lug the a/c out of the basement this weekend, though I so much prefer real air. But already the upstairs is muggy, and true hot weather hasn't even kicked in yet.

Thank goodness I went out to write last night. It felt really good to be with the poets, after my two-week absence, and now my notebook is peppered with useful scratchings and, just like that, my poem-making itch has returned.

I am full of eagerness. 

Thursday, June 19, 2025

The little northern city by the sea is swaddled in a warm wet blanket of fog, and the birds are singing crazily, and summer is about to blossom. Today the climbing roses, loaded with buds, will explode into crimson glory. Today I'll open all of the windows and put on sandals for my walk to the dentist. Today I'll sit on the front stoop with a glass of ice tea and watch the neighborhood babies wave bare feet as their strong mothers shove strollers up the hill.

Yesterday I posted a new Poetry Kitchen class, "The Morality of Imagination: Writing into Other Lives," a two-day generative and revision session inspired by Shelley's "Defence of Poetry." Though registration's been live for less than 24 hours, the class is already half full, so you might want to sign up quickly if you're at all interested.

Meanwhile, I've been reading a couple of Le Carre novels I plucked from free piles and musing over how deeply sorrowful they are. I know I've said this before, but does anyone write better about loneliness? I am not a spy-thriller aficionado, but his writing moves me deeply. He is to his genre what McMurtry is to the western: a novelist who manipulates routine plot and style expectations in ways that draw the reader into a complex and painful relationship with character, landscape, history, and language.

Tonight, after a two-week hiatus, I hope to finally get back to my writing group. In the meantime, I've got the house to clean, and some desk work to handle, and that aforementioned dentist appointment to endure. And a summer day to love.

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

 It's drizzly outside, and much warmer than it has typically been in the early mornings--already in the low 60s instead of our usual mid-40s or low 50s. I expect the plants are very, very happy.

Yesterday I finished another full round of weeding, and now every bed is in good shape. I've caught up on pruning and deadheading, and for the moment the place looks as good as it can look, given the ugliness of the house siding and the various gaps and snaggles in the yard infrastructure.

I finished Proulx's Barkskins yesterday. For such a massive book (700 pages or so), it was a surprisingly quick read, and quite interesting as well--a giant novel about the lumber industry may not sound scintillating, but it actually was, though the ending dropped into environmental preachiness . . . morally admirable, of course, but novelistically annoying.

This afternoon I'll have my monthly zoom confab with Teresa and Jeannie. This morning I'm not sure what I'll be doing with myself: going for a walk in the rain; maybe washing the upstairs windows; ideally, writing a poem, but who knows? Right now I am in an intense reading state; I am awash in other people's words . . . poems, novels, meditations. If that's what my heart desires, why should I argue?

Still, it's been an odd week so far . . . spacious, lonesome . . . books and books and garden and garden . . . I'm curious to see what happens next.

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Another cool and cloudy day on the horizon--though, believe it or not, we actually could use some rain. Things have dried out a lot since our last round of downpours. A little rain today and tonight would set the garden up nicely for the hot weather that's forecast to roll in later this week.

I've been waiting for another editing project to appear, so my work responsibilities have been scatty so far this week. Mostly I've been catching up on various reading projects--working my way through Patricia Smith's Unshuttered, starting Cecile Wajsbrot's Nevermore, finishing Maria Zoccala's Helen of Troy, 1993, and plowing into Annie Proulx's Barkskins. The stack on the coffee table is high.

Today will be more of the same, plus errands, plus weeding, mowing, and pruning, if the rain allows. I always feel sheepish about these blips of off-time, as if I should be doing "real" work rather than my own work, and I wish I didn't have to constantly wrestle with my own clear awareness that I am not wasting time. But such is the power of the past. At least I'm not giving in to those lies.

Monday, June 16, 2025

I woke this morning to learn that I've got a new poem up on Vox Populi . . . yet another elegy to 1970s western Pennsylvania. I don't know when I'll ever be done with that topic. It surfaces and resurfaces. It gives me no choice.

Another Monday. With school out, my walk will be quiet this morning. Deering Center features an elementary school, a middle school, a high school, and a college campus, all lined up, one after the other, on Stevens Avenue. It is the most educational of neighborhoods, and on school mornings and afternoons the streets are afloat with hand-holding parents and kindergartners, gaggles of lurching sixth graders, high schoolers clutching giant sugar drinks, jogging college students encased in headphones.

So in the summer the sidewalks are notably empty--just middle-aged trudgers, and dog servants, and strung-out parents with babies, and self-flagellating exercisers, and the occasional grouchy teenager muttering into a phone.

Speaking of self-flagellating exercisers, I did finally roll my bike out of the shed yesterday, dusted it off, pumped up the tires, and then T and I went for a spin--a delightful ride; I don't know why I took so long to get around to riding season. It was nothing but fun, and I'm not at all sore today, so why was I so slow?

Possibly because I was too busy writing the same poem for the twentieth time. 

Sunday, June 15, 2025

No surprise: attendance at yesterday's reading was tiny. Poets love demonstrating, and I'm glad so many of them were out on the streets where they needed to be. But it was a pleasant reading despite the minuscule crowd, and a bit of a distraction from family stuff: my elderly father has come down with Covid, so my sister and I have been in a constant state of text-triage.

Other than that continuing saga, I've got nothing on the docket for today. I hope to mow grass, and I need to do the grocery shopping, and I'd like to finally get my bike out of the shed and prep it for riding season.

And I'm longing to turn on the poem faucet again. I've been so roiled up with travel and obligation that I've barely touched my own real work. I keep going into the world and reading poems, and then feeling the tug of emptiness because I am not writing any poems at the moment. The loneliness of not making: it is as real a sorrow as any other.

Saturday, June 14, 2025

Well, weekend reading number 1 is in the books--a genial gathering of poets and musicians in Kittery (which is technically in Maine but feels like seacoast New Hampshire), including one of my oldest poet friends, Meg Kearney. Now today I'm heading north and inland for weekend reading number 2 at the Bailey Memorial Library in Winthrop (a town that is definitely in Maine), where I'll split the bill with another Portland poet, Mike Bove.

It's pleasant to sit quietly this morning, looking out at the few fat raindrops spattering the walkways. I know there will be a lot of protests around the country today, none of which I can attend because of this long-scheduled reading. But there's more than one way to lift a voice, so why not a poem instead of a sign? Shelley would agree.

The vases on the mantle are filled with white roses, white peonies, golden yarrow. The house is dim under rain-light and maple-light. Kitchen counters and tiles gleam vaguely in the gray-green ether. The rooms feel small, fragile. This is a house built of sticks, and a wolf could blow it down.


Friday, June 13, 2025

Yesterday it was 84 degrees in Portland, so to celebrate I lugged the fire tools and the woodbox to the basement. That means no more wood fires until September, and I hope my optimism about summer isn't misplaced.

The day was beautiful, though--sun and clouds and a swirling breeze; every window open and the garden sighing in pleasure. It was easy to believe that summer was real.

Today is supposed to be cooler but still balmy. I've got a few desk things to work on, but I should still be able to spend some time in the flowerbeds before I leave for Kittery. I've started reading Annie Proulx's Barkskins, a massive tome about French-Canadian settlement. I've got a stack of poetry books I need to read before I meet with Teresa and Jeannie next week. And I've got these back-to-back poetry events to finish prepping for. But the weather is so alluring. It's hard to keep my mind on words.

Thursday, June 12, 2025

It's peony season here in Maine--such beautiful flowers, such sloppy plants. No matter how carefully I tie them up, they always collapse and shatter.

This morning, the vases are full of peonies and the house is full of scent, usually a sign that spring is morphing into summer. Yet summer doesn't seem like a season to bank on. Thus far, cold rain has undermined every brief warm spell, and my vegetable garden has never looked worse. It's hard to picture a harvest.

But I'm not complaining, I'm not complaining. Today will be sunshiny, a good day for house and yard chores; a good day to eat my breakfast outside with a book; a good day to mull at my desk beside a wide-open window. I ought to go out to write tonight, but so far this week I've only spent one evening at home, and that feels wrong. Tomorrow night I'll be in Kittery for a reading, and then I'll be on the road for much of Saturday for my Winthrop reading. So I'm torn about tonight.

Anyway, I'll figure it out. In the meantime, I've got to write introductions for the faculty performances at Monson, I've got to plot out my three upcoming and very different readings, I've got to scrub bathrooms and weed the vegetable beds . . . The day unfolds.

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

A few years ago I opened an old Best American Short Stories volume that I'd found in a little free library and read my first Lori Ostlund short story. I loved it, so much so that I had the urge, as I sometimes do, to send her a note and tell her what I thought of it.

I like sending fan mail to writers I admire, though I know enough not to expect a response. Mostly people don't reply, and those who do tend to be appreciative but reserved--understandably, they don't want to get sucked into conversation with a potential weirdo. But Lori had none of that reserve. Not only did she write back instantly, but she immediately bought one of my books and read it with her wife, the novelist Anne Raeff, who in turn reached out to me to talk about the poems in the collection that had mattered to her.

So when I learned that the two would be in Portland during Lori's book tour, I of course made plans to go to the reading. What I didn't expect was an invitation to dinner the night before so that we could get to know each other in person. What I didn't expect was a book signed to "One of My Favorite Poets."

This country is such a shithole right now. Maybe that's why these little lights gleam so brightly in my thoughts. What generosity, to extend a hand . . . to invite a stranger to be a friend.

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Apparently, we are trapped in a loop of endless April. My vegetable garden may be a loss this year, but on the bright side the songbirds seem to be enjoying the perpetual cold rain, the terrible backyard is finally turning into an arbor, and I'm not worrying too much about sunburns.

Yesterday I finished an editing project, then muscled through conference paperwork and went up to Bowdoin to rehearse with conference faculty before having a sweet evening out with the San Francisco writers. Today will be more conference planning: figuring out my reading plans, pulling together poems for sharing. I've also got to prep for readings this Friday and Saturday, and then there's Lori's reading to attend tonight . . . life is kind of head-spinning this week, but at least I've now got an editing gap so I can pull myself together without too much panic.

Planning for the conference has been complex, mostly because our theme is complex. Last fall Teresa and I decided to focus on varieties of collaboration--not only in terms of communal projects but also across disciplines and time. As a result, all of the faculty members have been pulling each other in as performance and teaching partners . . . which is delightful and deeply engaging and interesting while also making me feel like an eight-armed, wild-eyed, schedule monster. What will I forget? Something vital, no doubt.

Monday, June 9, 2025

The dawn air is thick with haze--Canadian wildfire smoke, I think, though I can't smell it. I've got a busy day ahead--a walk, and then editing, and then the violin and I are taking a jaunt to Bowdoin to rehearse with Gretchen and Gwynnie for their Monson performance. Then tonight I'm having dinner with a pair of San Francisco-based fiction writers I've never met before. But over the past couple years, we've gotten friendly about each others' work, and now they're in town for a reading tomorrow, so they reached out with a dinner invitation.

The entire week will vibrate at this level of busy. I've got a reading on Friday in Kittery, on Saturday in Winthrop. On Wednesday I'm talking with Teresa about Shelley. On Tuesday I'm going to Lori Ostlund's reading here in Portland. Usually I'd be going out to write on Thursday, but I'm not sure I'll be able to manage yet another night out this week.

And the conference is coming up fast. All of my big plans are set, but I've still got to print everything out, tweak details, figure out logistics, organize my reading, collect the books I'm bringing, reach out again to participants, and so on and so forth . . . Even though my responsibilities are more contained than they were at the Frost Place (no housecleaning or meal planning, thank goodness),  they are still myriad, and at this time of year I always feel as if my hair is flying off my head.

We've still got that one spot open . . . and it could be yours--

Sunday, June 8, 2025

We must have had a big thunderstorm overnight because this morning the garden looks like it's been beaten up: peonies sagging, iris mashed. But the air is quiet now, and the sky is hazy but clearish, and soon I'll get myself outside to assess the day's chores.

Last night was my friend Marita O'Neill's book launch. It was such an uplifting affair--lots of friends and family and community camaraderie . . . exactly the right sort of reading and party. I don't love all parties, by any means, and I can get panicky and anxious in social settings. So it was sweet to be in a gathering that was the exact opposite of my fear. Last night, whichever way I turned, there was a person I was delighted to talk to.

As I write, the sky is brightening. Pale sun-glitter rims puddles and wet roofs. I'm looking forward to a day in the garden--weeding, mowing, pruning as the birds chatter and the neighborhood babies cackle and wail.

I spent much of yesterday reading Shelley's "Defense of Poetry," an essay I've read many times before. It's not an easy piece to get through: every time I start by thinking, "I have no idea what he's saying." And then suddenly the sentences begin to shine, suddenly I have slipped beyond, in his words, "the dull vapours of the little world of self":

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensively and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

Saturday, June 7, 2025

Saturdays are always rainy in Maine, but for the moment no actual water is falling. This morning's air is thick with humidity. Fog curls through the open windows, and a robin trills relentlessly--repeat, repeat, repeat. Gulls swirl overhead, squawking and wailing. The sky has the dull glitter of a galvanized pail, and the gardens throb with green.

The day will be filled with this-and-thats. It's far too wet to work outside, but maybe I can walk. I've still got lots of Shelley homework to finish; my future daughter-in-law asked me to read the draft of an article she's working on; I'm one of the openers at my friend Marita's book launch tonight, which means I've got to choose a poem. No doubt there are other obligations that I've temporarily forgotten.

And now here comes the rain again, tapping and pattering.

On the mantle are two slim and velvety Siberian irises and the first milk-pale peony, unfolding. I am thinking of poems, though I am not thinking about either writing or reading them . . . more, thinking about how the feeling of poems twists and tugs around me like a scarf fluttering in the wind.

Friday, June 6, 2025

Connecticut traffic was terrible, so I didn't get home till almost 9 p.m. last night. But now here I sit, on a muggy, storm-ominous morning, as T moseys around the kitchen making his breakfast and the cat mildly yowls at the door.

Today will be laundry and housework and undoubtedly groceries, once I figure out how empty the place has gotten. Meanwhile, thunder lashes the distance, and the pollen headache I've had for six days settles into its accustomed corner of my skull, and the air drapes and sags like a moth-eaten boa.

Thursday, June 5, 2025

 I'll be heading back to Maine today, after a lovely, lovely visit. Yesterday's ferry ride to the Rockaways was a highlight, wandering around the Village in the summer evening was another . . . It was so good to spend intense time with my boy and with Stephen. As always, leaving this town is poignant. As always, it's like leaving a version of home.

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Yesterday I saw this Hilma af Klint show at MOMA--a very odd and wonderful display of her precise botanical drawings, her peculiar diagrammatic visions of atoms and plant propagation, and the meanings that stood behind each plant she studied: oddly precise emotional or physical states such as "Belief in help during mountain climbing / Don't forget paradisiacal virginity." The show was a revelation of obsession, with something Dickinsonian about it, and Jeannie and I were mesmerized.

Today P and I are going to take the ferry to the Rockaways, a 45-minute ride through New York Harbor, then around Coney Island to Jamaica Bay: all for $4. I love boat rides and am looking forward to seeing the city from an entirely new angle.

And then tonight the reading at KGB . . . here's hoping I'm not too sleepy after all of that walking and air.

Tuesday, June 3, 2025

P and I walked around Green-Wood in the afternoon, where we saw an egret and waxwings and bullfrogs and the burying ground of Boss Tweed. It was a mild day, activity-wise, but for some reason I slept like a boulder. I'm not sure why I was so tired. With Ray gone, there is no more perpetual beer, no more ridiculous too-late dinners, no more listening to one album after another until 4 a.m. Instead, I ate tacos and drank an horchata and dropped into bed like I'd been felled. Life has become staid, and Brooklyn has become almost restful.

Monday, June 2, 2025

This will be a brief hello as typing is hard on the bus. Last time I rode this route, it was January and we were driving into iced-over darkness. Now, as I embark, it's full daylight--skies blue, trees in leaf, a different world. And in 6 hours I'll be in the fabled metropolis, where it's already summertime.

Yesterday T bought our tickets to Chicago . . . another train adventure to look forward to. I am thrilled about getting to see both of my boys this summer, each in his own domain. I'm happy to be setting off on today's solo outing, happy also that T and I will get to travel together in July. Today I'll wend my way to Brooklyn, meet my kid for lunch, go for a walk with him in June-beautiful Green-wood, along the scuffed and scatty streets of Sunset Park, chatter and sigh and laugh together, as we do, as we always do.

I hope your day is just as sunny.

Sunday, June 1, 2025

Portland is enveloped in a haze of drizzle--thinner than rain, thicker than mist; more like quiet atmospheric tears than a definable weather event.

I spent much of my rainy Saturday in the kitchen--baking a cherry pie, making dough and then pizza--but I also worked upstairs on a poem draft, which this morning is pleasing me very much. Between showers I spread lettuce seed and transplanted nasturtiums. Last year's plants self-sowed plentifully, a big surprise: nasturtium seeds never wintered over in central Maine, but here in balmy seaside Portland they are regenerating like crazy. So I am moving dozens of seedlings to bare patches in other beds, and with luck they will take hold and bloom all summer.

Today I need to focus on packing for New York, always a challenge. I'll be dragging around my suitcase and backpack all day long on Monday--clumping up and down subway stairwells, trailing through crowds--so everything needs to be as compact as possible. Because I am not naturally good at traveling light, I have to find ways to force myself to be reasonable. For instance, last spring, before I took my big train trip to Chicago, I purposely bought a tiny purse and a too-small backpack. That approach worked pretty well, though nothing can make a suitcase easier to haul through the New York subway system.

If you happen to be in the city and are in the mood for poems, I'll be reading on Wednesday at the launch of the anthology Poetry Is Bread, at KGB on East 4th Street, 7-9 p.m. The book began as the poet Tina Cane's pandemic video project, She invited numerous poets to make videos for her during and after Covid, and then morphed those readings into a book. Lots of us will be in attendance on Wednesday, which at least guarantees a crowd of listeners.

Mostly, though, I am looking forward to hanging out with my kid, hanging out with my friends, bopping through museums and gardens, riding the ferry, trudging the streets, surprising myself.

Saturday, May 31, 2025

Saturday dawn. I wake and doze and wake and doze to gentle rainfall. With the bedroom windows open, the patter is close and comforting. Half-conscious, I pretend I'm in a tent, on a screened sleeping porch, in the loft of a thin-roofed barn.

***

Now, an hour later, I sit wrapped in my red bathrobe in the unlit living room. A car swishes past. Raindrops tap and clatter and peck and chirp, a staid and steady concert in the windless air. Upstairs Tom and the cat curl and stretch among the clean sheets. Outside the gardens glow . . . lemony iris posed against white drifts of bridal veil spirea . . . a garlic chorus jazz-handing among red-onion spikes . . . 

***

Yesterday I shipped off my editing assignment and then spent most of the rest of the day outside, weeding, mowing, watering transplants, hacking grass and dandelions out of the gravel walkway. Sonja the poet-landscape designer arrived to treat the ash tree. I never thought I'd be happy about a pesticide, but that is the only way to save our beautiful specimen tree from the ravages of the emerald ash borer. All around the city ash trees are disappearing. But not this one. This one will grow old.

***

I will head to New York on Monday morning, and I am examining the odd and delightful sensation of being caught up on every chore before leaving home for most of a week. Paying work, housework, garden work. Clean sheets, clean bathrooms, clean floors, mowed grass, weeded gardens, edited files. Surely I've forgotten to do something vital?

The rain will fall all day long, and maybe I will putter among poem drafts, maybe do some grocery shopping, maybe bake something, maybe figure out our Chicago itinerary, maybe go for a walk in the rain, maybe read a little Shelley, maybe listen to baseball . . . maybe is such a restful word.

***

In gray rain-light the quiet rooms are almost strangers.

Friday, May 30, 2025

I went out to write last night, after missing last week when I was in Vermont, and my brain-hand-heart consortium was so glad to be back at work. I haven't reread anything yet; it may all be vapid scribbling; but I'm please to have a few busy pages waiting for me, when I can find space to greet them.

Today is recycling day, sheet-washing day, and, to my surprise, finishing up the editing project day. I did not think I'd get this manuscript off my desk before leaving for New York, but somehow I managed to pound out the hours, and by this afternoon I'll bid it farewell.

And it didn't rain yesterday, and possibly it might not rain today . . . what is this new world? Of course it will definitely rain all weekend, but still: four warmish days in a row without a smidgen of drizzle? What luxury.

Last night in the car Betsy was telling us about a time when she was wailing to her husband, "When I will I ever stop being unhappy?" And his response was to say, gently, "When you feel gratitude." On paper that exchange looks banal, like the most annoying sort of Encouraging Words™, yet in Betsy's voice I heard the simplicity of it. Misery is centered on the "I": "I don't have what I want," "I dread the future."  Gratitude is the "I" is looking up and away and beyond the "I." The exchange was not just smarmy self-help speak. It was a way of framing Keats's negative capability.

Thursday, May 29, 2025

Clouds have moved in, but no rain yet, and maybe there won't be any after all. I have a few new seedlings and transplants to water, so I'm not actually against rain today. On the other hand, I'd like to dry towels on the line. Whatever happens will be perfect--I'll get to be happy and annoyed. Ah, the human condition: it's so silly.

This morning I'll take my walk and then steal an hour to read Shelley before getting serious about housework. And then back to my editing stack, and back to weeding and mowing, and then I'll go out to write tonight.

The days have been so full of work. I was glad to spend half an hour with a friend who dropped by for ice tea in the afternoon, but that was an anomaly. This editing project has been driving me hard, and unfortunately I don't think I'm going to get it done before I leave for New York on Monday. Oh, well.

I've been rereading a sad LeCarre novel. I woke in the middle of the night filled with anxiety about a rosebush. I've dreamed about leaving Harmony, again. Melancholy creeps along the small trails.

* * *

There's still ONE opening left at the Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts. Please consider joining us. It will be such a good gathering. Honestly, this year's participants and faculty are stellar. You will not be sorry. Nor do you have to be a poet. Or a teacher. Though if you are one or both, that's excellent too. The thing is: the labels don't matter. What you have to be is you.

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

 Sunshine and warmth! What is this strange world? Yesterday was storybook May, and today will be another such day, and, yes, it's supposed to rain for the rest of the week, but I'm taking joy where I can find it . . . I ate my breakfast outside, and my lunch outside, and I sat out on the stoop with the cat during every editing break, and opened all of the windows, and wore a summer dress with sandals, and brewed ice tea, and the birds sang like crazy and chipmunks dashed hither and yon, and toddlers shrieked excitedly at the cat, and the vegetable seedlings sprouted new leaves to celebrate.

I've been rereading LeCarre's A Perfect Spy, though I'm still procrastinating on Shelley and have to get myself moving on that project this afternoon. I've started to figure out next week's New York schedule--so far MOMA with Jeannie, the Rockaways with Paul, trivia night at the bar, a reading at KGB. I found some free primroses on the side of the road and planted them in a front garden bed. I got a haircut and drank a beer and made risotto with chicken and wild mushrooms in it and I lost a cribbage game.

Small patterns ripple the hours. Laundry flickers on the line. I'll write a poem.

Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Yesterday was a lovely day to be outside. We did end up driving down to the Laudholm Farm bird sanctuary, and then I spent most of the rest of the day working in the backyard--mowing, weeding, putting up the hammock, cleaning chairs and table, and otherwise getting the space into reasonably alluring condition.

Today will be even lovelier, though I'll be back at my desk for most of it. But at least the windows will be open all over the house, at least I'll get in my morning walk, at least I'll have clothes to hang on the line, at least I'll have poems bubbling in my thoughts. That's one good thing about responsible behavior: I can sneak away from it.


In his copy of the New Testament [Herman Melville] underlined a passage in Romans 14: "Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God."

The only kind of Faith--one's own, he wrote in the top margin.

                       --from Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel

Monday, May 26, 2025

Hard to believe, but I think we're finally supposed to get a little bit of warmth and sun today. Already T is out and about with a camera, and when he gets back we may go out for breakfast and then for a walk at the bird sanctuary . . . or we may not. We did have a holiday-weekend meal last night--a fire in the fire pit, grilled bison medallions and marinated halloumi, twice-baked potatoes with the first red onion harvest, a salad with baby lettuce from the garden, a strawberry-cranberry-rhubarb pie--and only a little rain fell on us, so we felt lucky.

I devoted much of Saturday to obligations: groceries and laundry, weeding and mowing. I'll be home all of this week, but in New York with my younger son all of next week, so I've got a limited window for getting things into trim around here, if that's even possible after so much rain. And there's a ton of editing on my desk, too much Shelley homework to read, interlibrary-loan books for another reading project on the way, and T and I need to plan a trip to Chicago for late July so that we can hug our older boy and meet his fiancee's parents, which will be delightful . . . but ay yi yi: it's hard to picture myself with my head out of the chore bucket.

Well, I'm not complaining. I'm just a little overwhelmed, which is usual at this time of the year. The teaching conference is looming, and that is always a massive undertaking. I'm grateful to be employed, and immersed in poetry projects with friends, and hanging out with my sweetheart, and surrounded by flowers, and summoned affectionately by my children. Also my cat hasn't been re-kidnapped lately.

But spring is a breathless season, summer even more so. 

Sunday, May 25, 2025

Home.

It's 5 a.m. In the cellar, laundry churns in the washing machine. Upstairs, early light peers through the panes. I've emptied the dishwasher, tidied counters, made coffee, let the cat out. Tom has been gone since 4:30--heading out to the docks to take photos at dawn--so I am alone, puttering quietly among my morning tasks. It's peaceful to be here, amid these little habits.

Oddly, there's no rain forecast for today. Eventually I'll get clothes onto the lines. I'll do the grocery shopping. I'll settle into garden work, I'll mull over meals. For now I am resting in the gray-shadowed living room, watching pale day wash into the sky, reacquainting my body with this little house, this little life . . . two chairs pulled up to the dining room table, two towels on the bathroom rack, a small bed for two tucked under the eaves.

"The man, the enigma" is how our son describes his father. But of course love is a mysterious stranger.

On the mantle, before I left for Vermont, I arranged a bouquet of tightly budded chives, salvia, yarrow. Now the buds have opened--purples and dusty yellows, leaves tangled and lacy, a miniature thicket.

Refrigerator hums. Clock ticks. Rinse water splashes into wet sheets. The house murmurs through its chores. For the moment I am unnecessary, except to open the front door and call the cat back in.

Saturday, May 24, 2025

 I'm lying in a room that is like a memorial to 10th grade. The walls are covered with good-boy-at-school certificates, decorated paper plates, and Guardians of the Galaxy posters. Through the window I look over Lake Champlain farmland--long stretches of fields striped with hedgerows, though the mountains that are usually visible from both sides of the house (Adirondacks from the front windows, Greens from the back) have been erased by cloud. This is dairy-farm country, forest long ago subdued to grass, a realm of tame and pretty hills. Postcard Vermont. Not my homeland.

Friday, May 23, 2025

Good morning from damp and cloudy Vermont. Apparently it's been raining hard at home, but nothing much seems to be happening here so far.

I ought to go for a walk today. Yesterday afternoon, when I had a bit of off time, all I did was fall asleep on my nephew's bed, but that was a side-effect from the cat excitement of the day before. At about 6:30 p.m. I'd let Ruckus outside, expecting him to be back yowling at the door within a few minutes, which is his usual pattern. But by 7, no cat. I stepped outside and called. No cat. I walked around the neighborhood, Tom walked around the neighborhood. No cat. With growing anxiety, I went further afield to look at busy Forest Avenue to see if he'd been hit by car. No cat. It was getting dark, pushing 9 p.m., far later than he was ever out. He's 13 years old, not prone to wander and a luxuriant who likes his household comforts. Something had gone wrong.

With desperation I went to my computer to look up the Next Door online message board, planning to put up his photo and ask neighbors to check their sheds and garages. But lo and behold: someone else had already posted a photo of Ruckus in their house, with the caption "Is this your cat?" Turns out they lived more than a mile from us, far too long a distance for him to walk. What could possibly have happened?

Well, what happened is that the daughter of the house, a middle schooler, had been walking through our neighborhood, saw Ruckus crossing the street, worried that he might be lost or get hit, and in some still undetermined way carried him back to her house. Apparently, this is the downside of having a very friendly cat: people kidnap him. We were fortunate she had good intentions and her mother could deal with the situation. But lord.

Thursday, May 22, 2025

 I'm hitting the road early today so will talk tomorrow. Stay tuned for cat drama. Oy. 

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Another cold gray day on the docket, and then three days of rain to follow . . . and naturally they are timed exactly for when I'm supposed to be driving back and forth to Vermont. Sigh.

Well, we'll see what transpires. It's possible my family would rather I didn't come when the weather's bad, but for now I'm assuming I'll be on the road tomorrow. So today will be housework day, and it ought to be weeding day as well, but the conditions have been poor for garden work. I did get the grass mowed yesterday, so that's one thing to cross off the list. But the laundry never dried, and the air was a refrigerator, and everyone I saw on my walk had their coats zipped up tight, except for teenagers.

Given the weather this week as well as my incipient travel plans, I've been more or less nailed to my editing desk, though I've been working on conference plans around the edges. I ought to be designing some more Poetry Kitchen classes, but right now all of my teaching energies are focused on the conference, and I can't seem to dredge up the get-up-n-go for a whole new round of invention. I think in some ways I haven't quite recovered from my glum period. Also, when I look back at this winter I think, Jeez. No wonder. Ray died. The United States took an axe to the head. I was sick enough to go to the emergency room. Also I worked really, really hard through all of it. I need to cut myself some slack. Those new Poetry Kitchen classes will appear eventually.

On the mantle is a fresh bouquet of half-opened chive flowers and budded-up salvia and yarrow. Outside lilacs are blooming, and the white azalea glows in the half-light. Bluebells and woodruff sweeten the shade.

I know I've got to tug on my boots and make myself drive to Vermont tomorrow. I know have to grind out a few more hours at my desk, and then scrub toilets and drag the vacuum cleaner around the house. Before enlightenment: chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood and carry water. Always the same old story.

But I will go for my walk this morning. I will breathe in the fragile, fleeting scent of crabapple blossoms. I will watch baby squirrels wrestle and chase in my backyard. I will keep reading this incredible Colson Whitehead novel I snagged at a yard sale on Sunday. One of these days that old sun will decide to show his face again. I look forward to seeing him.

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

The weather's suddenly gotten so cold again. Yesterday was raw and blustery; and even I, dedicated outdoorser, couldn't find the gumption to weed or mow in a damp wind. Then, of course, the rains erupted and I just barely snatched the laundry off the line in time. Last night I lit a fire in the stove, and this morning the furnace has kicked on. It's hard to believe that, calendar-wise, we're on the cusp of summer. The view looks like mid-May but the air feels like the first of April. We've had maybe four balmy days over the past two months. And yet everything is growing beautifully. Clearly spring knows what it's doing, so I will not complain.

Instead of working outside, I spent most of the day at my desk, plunging through a fat stack of editing, though I did take time out for a coffee party to talk with faculty about their conference plans. Today I'll be back at my desk, but maybe this time I'll also talk myself into doing some afternoon yardwork in the cold.

I've been reading Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle and very much enjoying it, though I ought to get back to my Shelley assignment instead of wallowing in novels, as is my wont. I enjoyed the recent New Yorker article about the New York Mets, and then last night enjoyed listening to Mets radio as the Red Sox beat them. (The Mets are my second-favorite team, and I could also be talked into rooting for the Tigers in the postseason. I fear that the Red Sox will not be an option in that regard.)

I do wish I could sleep better. Even when I've managed to doze off, I've been beset by peculiar linked dreams centering around various central Maine women of my acquaintance who've always made me feel nervous and awkward. Plus, I lost my glasses in a car that might have been a DeLorean.

Well, so it goes . . . dream life and waking life are both imperfect, but at least in the awake version I've got my glasses on.