Discovering the Long Poem

 Early in my poetry apprenticeship, my teacher, Baron Wormser, pointed out a few of my habits to me. I retreated to glibness and fancy forms to avoid exploring content. I equated revision with radical cutting. I wrote by ear. This last habit, he said, was one he would never question . . . and he never did. From the beginning he trusted my ear, and that was what taught me to trust it. But the other two habits? He was merciless with them. He pushed me into physical language and away from received forms, telling me I shouldn't, for instance, write sonnets until I had a better notion of them as a container rather than a mask. He told me to stop reading and imitating writers such as William Carlos Williams until I had a stronger sense of my own voice and what I needed to say. Exquisite brevity wasn't necessarily concision. Sometimes it was murder. For the first time, I began to recognize that brevity might be forcing me away from exploration.

It was Baron who pushed me into writing my first long poems. I was, in those years, very aware of myself as a failed novelist. My assumption was that I had failed because I didn't have the stamina to crank out the requisite number of words, that I had some fatal misunderstanding of plot construction. It took me years to understand that my inability to write prose fiction had nothing to do with stamina or plot weaving. It had to do with how I was hearing and reacting to language.

Still, I was frightened at the idea of writing a long poem, and the fact that I was a worshipper of the past wasn't helping me. Milton and Keats and Homer lurked in the weeds. What did I have to say that they hadn't said already? In short, I was yellow-bellied: I paced back and forth on the edge of the cliff, winced at the depth of the chasm, invented a hundred reasons not to jump. You know what I mean. I expect you've spent some hard times on that cliff edge too.

But I was so lonely in the woods, with T away all day and two little boys to care for. I was desperate to become myself, whatever that self might be. I was desperate to make something. Working with Baron had opened a door into that unknown country. You could be a poet, he told me, and I clung to that hope. I could become a poet, but I was not a poet yet. And so I had to leap.

I know this all sounds like inflated melodramatic elegy, but I have always lived in a private world of emotional overexcitement. And oddly enough, writing my first long drafts showed me that this emotional overload could, in itself, be an essential driver of a poem. A long draft gave me, for the first time, room enough to feel. I was not cutting myself short. I had no goal, other than to keep opening, opening, opening.

I also began to see that these long drafts were giving me the chance to bring multiple parts of my private life together . . . my daily labor in woods, barn, house; the uproars of children and love; my deeply personal reading patterns; my landscape; my family past; my national shames and worries; my unwieldy terrors and longings.

Of course great short poems can also incorporate these matters. Yet for me, the spaciousness of long drafts became a web that not only linked disparate elements but also caught flies--unexpected strangers swarming up from my imagination.

What if Whitman had ended "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" after part 1? He would have possessed a brief and attractive poem-portrait. As a short poem, it's sweet and evocative and pleasant to read. But he didn't choose to stop. He kept pushing himself forward. "And yet," he murmured to himself. "And yet."

The long poem is an opportunity to say, "And yet," not just once, not just twice, but a dozen times, or more. "I am large, I contain multitudes," he declared in "Song of Myself." So am I. So are you. Writing a long poem is a way to explore our selves.

***

My latest Poetry Kitchen offering is a two-weekend class on writing the long poem, with help from Whitman. If you've never written a long poem, if you're terrified of long forms, if you're an eager writer of long pieces, prose or poetry: this class is for you.

Forty-nine degrees this morning! Autumn has arrived with a bang, and I am sporting my red bathrobe for the first time in months. Ruckus admired the red bathrobe very much, and I expect the new guy will like it too, one he gets his claws into it. Cats think polar fleece is extremely fashionable.

This chilly weather is reminding me that I've got to start moving firewood into the basement soon. I've got to pick up my winter coat from the dry cleaner. I've got to find a new heating-oil company pronto. And school is creeping closer and closer. Technically I've still got a month before classes start, but yesterday the Monson Arts staff met to discuss plans for our high school programs, and I'm starting to feel my schedule tighten.

But for the moment I'm still on summer time. We've got company coming this weekend, so today and tomorrow I'll be focusing on housework and food and Little Chuck hijinks. I'll get onto my mat, and I'll read, and I'll ponder my notebook of draft blurts, and I'll water my sad dry garden, and I'll go out to write tonight with my friends.

I'm happy to say that the Poetry Kitchen class is slowly starting to fill. I've been worried, and I'm grateful a few of you are taking the plunge with me. If nothing else, we'll have Whitman to keep us starry-eyed! Oh, that poem. I am in love.

Apparently we're supposed to get a drop of rain this morning, though only enough to make me sad we're not getting more. Ah, well. Not all is lost. Somehow my half-assed groundhog measures did the trick; and despite the drought, I am now bringing in more green beans and cucumbers than we can quickly consume, the lettuce and parsley are regenerating, and the cilantro only looks semi-terrible.

I did some weeding yesterday--selectively, because stirring up the soil just dries it out even more. I cut down dead flower stalks, deadheaded blooms, and ran the trimmer over the splayed edges of the brown lawn. Things out there look as good as they can look, which is not good at all but is at least no longer dotted with crabgrass.

As I worked, I pulled together some thoughts for a new class on the long poem, so check out what I've posted on the Poetry Kitchen page. I am not 100 percent sure the class will run, though I certainly hope so.   Are people interested in pushing themselves into length? I don't really know.

As I wrote yesterday, for me, the long poem has been transformative. I believe that my best work is likely embedded in those poems. I have learned so much about myself, about the expansiveness of poetry, about dramatic movement and tension, about narrative, about the unknown. Oddly, I've also had external success with those poems: several have appeared in major journals; several have received attention from well-known writers. Many people have the notion that long poems are unpublishable, but that is not the case.

Anyway, I'd love to spend time with you and Walt Whitman and your ventures into the long form. The class will take place over two weekends: one in October, the other in November. Between times, you'll be writing and sharing with other participants. Thus, I hope it will be a social opportunity as well as a writing one. I've capped the numbers at eight instead of my usual twelve so that we have ample time to share work.

The cost is $300, which a friend tells me is way too little to charge for so much time and planning. She worries that I am undervaluing myself, and I take her point. Probably I am undervaluing myself. But I also want to make these classes affordable. I know what it's like to have no money but to long for a community of writers.

Fifty-three degrees this morning, and we're forecast to get a high temperature of only sixty-five. I am glad to see the last of that ridiculous heat, though the continuing lack of rain is painful. Still, it will be pleasant to work outside on a cool day, and that is my plan: weeding, deadheading, running the trimmer, and such.

Yesterday I performed my annual drawer and closet clean-out: sorting through ragged underwear and unforgivable socks, admitting defeat with the supposedly decent items I never seem to wear. This is one of the advantages/disadvantages of living in a tiny house with hardly any closets: the stuff must go. Last week I did a book cull, this week a clothes cull. Fall is on the way, and I'm clearing the decks.

Last weekend's class went well, I think. It's interesting to watch people wrestle with their imaginations--to note where they are willing to venture, where they are not. Some people get distracted by other people's imaginations: say, the metaphors and allusions embedded in literature. Some people get distracted by the intensity of their own real-life emotions or situations. So where does private invention start to create a wormhole through these distractions? What pattern or word or sound is the first opening?

I'm thinking of constructing a future generative class around the building of a long poem--maybe using Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" as the source of prompts and conversation. About once a year or so I find myself writing a very long poem . . . but why? Where does this need come from? And where does the stamina come from? These poems often turn out to be very important to me, both personally and developmentally. They are big, in more ways than one. They are also exhausting. But I've noticed that few people in my classes seem to push themselves into length. What would happen if I created a structure for that experiment?

Today is my parents' sixty-third wedding anniversary. It is also the eighth anniversary of the day T and I closed on this house. That means we've now lived in Portland for nearly nine years (including our first year in the apartment on Munjoy Hill). We're not newcomers anymore.

Eight years in this seventy-seven-year-old house, with its rattletrap repair history and wildlife invasions; with its beautiful new kitchen and charming neighbors; with its sociable front garden and its past-glorious neighborhood cats; with its little wood stove and its clothesline; with its two tiny studies housing two tiny private lives; with its bed, built of Harmony ash, and its bedroom window, with its view of the bay-mirror sky and the wheeling gulls.

Well, I can admit, finally, that I'm glad to be here. This little neighborhood, this little house; the gift of being a poet among other poets; the ability to walk out my door to a meal, a market, the bay, even a small wood; the ease of traveling to visit my children. Eight years in, these amenities still feel extravagant. It is hard to explain how far away Harmony was, and is, from such easy congress.

When we moved to Harmony, we were twenty-eight years old and our blood ran hot and we were overflowing with energy and self-will. We would do everything ourselves! We would do everything in the hardest way possible! But now I am almost sixty-one, and I am ready to welcome a little ease. We still work all the time, so our version of ease is not really all that easy. But we've got a furnace and a dishwasher and trash pickup. We're five minutes away from the grocery store and ten minutes away from the bus to New York City. We can walk to a restaurant on a whim. Poets stop by for coffee. Neighbors leave sympathy cards for our dead cat. I came here kicking and wailing. But it's a good place to have landed.

Little Chuck had his first Bad Day yesterday. He got too excited about a fly and broke a flowerpot in the bathroom while I was teaching, then wailed outside my study door so I had to let him in and wiggle distracting peacock feathers for an hour while also trying to lead a class. Fortunately, having raised two boys, I am able to do five things at once. But I do have hopes that nap time will arrive earlier today and I will do less kitten-roping.

This morning Chuck is back to his usual post-breakfast coziness. We are sitting together on the couch, and C is purring and admiring my hair, and I am purring and admiring his hair, and one would never know we'd had words yesterday over a flowerpot. Chuck just doesn't think straight when a fly is involved.

Meanwhile, T was dealing with a pile of new acquisitions. He's been working on the same massive house build for years, but the job is finally winding down, and that means, among other things, that many over-ordered materials and unwanted items that would otherwise be headed for the dumpster are being offered to employees. So now, in addition to a massive pile of foraged lumber, a new ladder, a roll of window screen, etc., we are the bemused owners of a weird-looking coffee table that apparently cost $3,000 new. I thought I might hate it but I don't. I actually kind of like it, and it's encouraging us to think about getting a rug to go with it, and maybe another lamp, and turning the living room into a comical mod space.

So while I was teaching/Chuck-roping, T was replacing torn window screens, and cleaning the basement to make room for some of the foraged lumber, and putting junk on the curb to see if anyone would take it, and cogitating over the coffee table, and otherwise figuring out how to deal with his building-material harvest.

Now, at first light, the seagulls are screaming over something or other, and a pale breeze is creeping through the new window screens, and a kitten is coiled in my lap like a doughnut, and I am thinking about the dream I just had: I was eating lunch at a restaurant with my friend Gretchen when Taylor Swift showed up and starting hugging and kissing us like the dearest of old friends. Everyone else in the restaurant was amazed but Gretchen and I tried to stay cool, like this sort of thing always happened to us.

The big news around here is that Little Chuck's gut is showing signs of improvement. I can't help but think of the scene, late in War and Peace, when Natasha rushes out to tell her family that her baby's stool has turned from green to yellow. "This is the central moment of the novel!" crowed my college instructor, as various future Wall Streeters and med students stared at him in confusion. None of us (except for the teacher) knew anything about babies, so it's no wonder they were perplexed. Yet I do remember the surge of joy I felt . . . that such a scene could be central, that a dirty diaper could be the pivot of the universe. It was a fine thing for a twenty-year-old to learn.

I'll be working for much of today and tomorrow, leading a zoom class on reading, writing, and re-seeing persona poems. I hope that Chuck will manage to leave me alone, but I am not confident. Presently he is full of breakfast and is companionably curled up on the pillow behind my shoulder, but this sort of Hallmark-card behavior is always extremely temporary.

I've had to take a small break from To the Lighthouse because, like the characters, like the novelist, I am always devastated when Mrs. Ramsay suddenly dies, mid-tale. It never stops being a shock. Instead, I've started looking at Trust, a novel by Cynthia Ozick, which a friend recommended. I know I'll get back to the Woolf, probably very soon, but that death is one of the hardest in literature.

Maybe Petya's, in War and Peace, is as terrible. Maybe the drowning of Maggie in The Mill on the Floss.

Little Chuck is patting my cheek with a paw and purring to beat the band. He argues that he is nothing like death, but I have already lost Ruckus and Ray and my nation this year, so I know better. Still, I let myself believe in this foolish, spiky, four-pound ball of wiggle. "Rules for happiness; something to do, someone to love, something to hope for," wrote Kant, of all people. Perhaps he had just seen his child's dirty diaper. Perhaps he was grinning.

***

On another note: speaking of persona poems, I've got a new one out in the Hole in the Head Review, alongside work by my dear Betsy Sholl. 

 Little Chuck loves to sit on my hands as I type this note to you. After a night of sleeping, he is ready for pal time, and climbs aboard enthusiastically--purring, wiggling, rubbing his nose all over the keyboard, and manhandling my spelling. Admittedly he is as cute as a button while he's destroying my sentences. [Cute as a button is one of my favorite cliches. Buttons are definitely pretty cute.]

It's Friday, and I'll be working all weekend, so I'll likely let myself play today. Yesterday, amid my chores, I worked on a couple of poem drafts, read To the Lighthouse, and prayed for rain (to little avail). Today I absolutely have to clean the piles of books off my desk and arrange my study for a weekend of zooming, but I'll also go for a walk and I'll keep mucking around with my stuff . . . work on a set of poems that borrows lines from Whitman and Woolf, fetch a book from the library around the corner, wrestle with this silly kitten. I think the weather will be cooler, so maybe I can even spend some time in the garden, though the dryness is depressing.

Teresa had a dream that Ruckus came back from the underworld to remind Chuck of how to behave. Ruckus himself always behaved badly in real life, and would certainly have clobbered Chuck as soon he caught sight of him, so this is definitely a fictional scenario, not a mythical message. But isn't it funny that my friend, far away in Florida, dreamed about my cats? She's never even met Chuck.

Well, I must say goodbye and go gather up the recycling for the curb, and empty the messy litterbox, and wash the breakfast dishes, and throw a load of laundry into the machine, and otherwise enact my house persona. I am thinking of Mrs. Ramsey, in To the Lighthouse--her entire life wrapped up in service to others, believing fervently that this was the best possible life for a woman . . . and yet her interior world, her tidal reflections, her fierce privacy. 

Last night, at the ballgame, the temperature finally settled into something like sweetness, but this morning the air is sticky and dense and ominous. Let's hope it really does lead to thunderstorms. We need rain desperately.

Teresa and I talked yesterday afternoon about Whitman, and both of us were infatuated. Though I've read these poems many, many times before, somehow, on this go-round with "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," I was gobsmacked. "Brooklyn Ferry" especially . . . I felt like I needed to find a way to bring the poem into my body . . .  like I wanted to eat it. What a poem. What a mind. How lucky are we, as humans, to have this artifact of ourselves?

Hey, you should read that poem again. You really should.

I've started pecking away at a small unsatisfactory draft of my own (but perhaps everything would have been unsatisfactory after living inside "Brooklyn Ferry"). And I've finished rereading Murdoch's The Green Knight (also a very good book) and have started rereading Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Today will be housework day, and evening poetry day, and go-pick-up-Chuck's-medicine day--he's been diagnosed with giardia, poor boy, probably picked up from contaminated water in his birthplace. Sounds like it should be a reasonably easy fix, thank goodness, but of course medicating a cat is always an ordeal.

And rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain. If you know any spells or incantations, please invoke them ASAP.

I opened the windows this morning, though I will likely have to close them again before long. Still, it is a relief, even if fleeting, to listen to cardinals pewing and crows cawing and jays squawking and to feel real live air sifting through the screens instead of being boxed up with a/c roar and wind.

Gray first light. Quiet, except for bird clatter. Yesterday I finished working through my stack of poetry manuscripts, wrote out my responses, had a phone meeting with a man who wants to hire me to help him put together an essay manuscript, took Chuck to the vet, watered the garden, made chicken and rice and cucumber salad for dinner. Chuck was, of course, a star at the vet. There's nothing like a friendly lively kitten to make an entire staff of vet techs go soft and googly-eyed. He weighs just over four pounds, small for his age, and he's got some kind of gut issue that has yet to be diagnosed (results should be in today), but he's clearly sparkly and mischievous and he eats well, so once we get that worm or giardia or bacterial issue resolved, he should start gaining weight normally. The vet seems confident, so I will be too. The poor guy had a hard start. It's amazing how well he's doing now, given the conditions he was born into.

This morning I'll go out for my walk before the heat kicks in again, and then I'll turn to my own work: look at poems, maybe apply for a grant, maybe submit a few things, perhaps even consider whether I should start imagining a new collection. This afternoon Teresa and I are going to talk about Whitman, and I'm hoping I'll have to pick up Chuck's prescription, and then this evening I'll meet a friend for a Sea Dogs game. A summer day--poems and birds and baseball. And tomorrow, rain? What a gift that would be.

The weather has returned to torrid. The thermometer hit 90 yesterday and will likely do the same today; maybe tomorrow as well. Fortunately the house is small enough for our one small a/c unit to keep the humidity in check. You know I hate running it, but on these kinds of days it's a boon.

So after my first-thing-in-the-morning walk, I spent much of yesterday comfortably ensconced on the couch: reading a poetry manuscript, working on meeting plans, and periodically dipping back into Murdoch's The Green Knight. Then, in the afternoon, I had a zoom meeting about 2026 teaching conference plans and about a residency in Sarasota that Teresa is cooking up--a week in March for working on a collaborative performance. Right now my March schedule looks crazy--a mad press of teaching in Monson, flying to Florida, flying back from Florida, driving to Bangor for the MCELA event, teaching in Monson--but it's so far away that I can pretend my eyes won't be popping out of my head.

Hey, by the way, save the dates for that 2026 conference: July 5-12!

Today: more manuscript reading, more garden watering, more planning of various sorts, plus Little Chuck goes to the vet. I've been immersed in Murdoch's novel, thinking again about how I've struggled to write about her work . . . I think it always feels too smart for me; I don't know how to speak about the philosophical underpinnings, just about the melodrama and the swirl of characters and the inevitability of error.

Last night, as I was texting with various of my young people, I was thinking, What larks!--a catchphrase from Dickens's Great Expectations--what sweet Joe says to his wife's young brother, Pip, whenever they find a bit of happiness together. One of my young people was in Niagara to see the falls and marvel in the kitsch; another was beaming in a wedding gown. Both were excited, and I felt so lucky to be chattering away with them and enjoying their glee. Thank goodness for these sweethearts in my life.

And now it is morning. The summer air is as thick and warm as ever, yet it's freighted with darkness, that inexorable reminder of winter. I need to think about moving firewood into the basement. I need to think about dry-cleaning winter coats. But then the sun opens its eyes and the heat starts to build and I forget about autumn for another day.

With the big editing project off my desk, I'm turning my attention to other tasks this week. I've got two poetry manuscripts to study and comment on; I need to prep for next weekend's class; I have to attend various meetings; Little Chuck goes to the vet. Undoubtedly my calendar is scrawled with a host of other reminders too. But in and among these chores I should find a bit of space to myself: to linger idly at the windows, to hum and putter; to write and read, to dream.

This was our view yesterday evening from the ferry dock on Chebeague Island. Just a few miles away the city waterfront bustles with lights and cars and restaurant goers and buskers and sorrowful lonely men on benches. Meanwhile the sun sets and the full moon tarries out of sight, waiting for its hour, when it will settle above the horizon, as round and golden as an apricot.

I was tired by the time we got home. After a night of little sleep, I'd labored all morning in the sun, wrestling with fencing and stakes to create (I hope) at least a few groundhog-free zones in my poor damaged garden. Now the raised beds are surrounded with netting, the okra and beans are fenced, and I've transplanted kale, lettuce, carrots, and herbs into some of the protected areas, leaving the rest to fend for themselves and/or distract the groundhogs. I've still got lots of vulnerable plants, but maybe I can save these few. The project took hours, and then I quickly cleaned myself up and we embarked on our afternoon outing: crowded boats, a lot of walking . . . ordinarily all fine and fun, but by late in the day my energy was flagging.

Fortunately all of that outdoorsiness led to a good night's sleep, and I'm glad to be sitting here idly with a purring Little Chuck, who has already created a giant mess in his litterbox this morning (perhaps in is the wrong word) and is now unrepentantly cozy on my lap.

Today will be quiet, I think. I need to go to the grocery store at some point, and probably I'll mess around with some yard and house things, but nothing as extravagant as yesterday's groundhog barricades. I've got a busy week ahead and I'll be teaching all next weekend, so I'm happy to have an unstructured today. Summer is slipping by . . .

 Thank goodness it's Saturday and I can get a bit of a late start this morning. At 1 a.m. I woke up in a stupid brain panic over nothing so had to come downstairs to the living room couch and try to distract myself for a couple of hours before I could finally succumb. Fortunately Little Chuck, unlike Ruckus, is not an alarm clock with teeth but merely a friendly breakfast suggester. So I was able to pet him into submission while dozing a little longer.

This morning I've got to take steps to deal with groundhog defense. The damage is getting extreme, and I am downhearted. So I'm going to do some transplanting and construct a few barriers from existing materials and hope I can salvage at least a few of my crops.

But in the afternoon T and I plan to embark on an adventure--take a ferry out to Chebeague Island and then walk across the sandbar to uninhabited Little Chebeague and wander the trails and beaches for a few hours while the tide is out, then catch an evening ferry back to the city. This will be Little Chuck's longest experience at home alone, but I think he's ready to try . . . We've got to get him into training before I go back to my Monson schedule.

What else is new? Let me think. I had a lovely lunch yesterday with my friend Rebekah, visiting east from California. I met her via one of my manuscript classes, and since then she's had a chapbook published--the best possible outcome. It was a delight to meet in person after all this time. And the Maine Council for English Language Arts has invited me to be their featured presenter at their annual poetry night, which will take place in March on the night before their convention proper begins. I'll be at Penobscot Theater in Bangor, in front of a big crowd of English teachers from around the state, with 90 minutes on stage to use for a mix of writing prompts, conversation, and a reading. It feels like a big deal, and I'm excited.

And then there's wedding stuff. The event isn't till next Labor Day weekend, but my sister and I have been having an amusing time combing this year's end-of-season online sales together, looking at dresses and shoes, and now we have ordered the exact same pair of shoes for the occasion, which is amusing us greatly. The hunt for comfortable dressy sandals with a little heel that can make aging women feel fancy without killing themselves: it's a challenge, and we are having a fun and silly time together. It's so nice to be frivolous with my sister.

Yesterday I worked on a poem, read Whitman, read Murdoch, and made rigatoni with ground lamb, zucchini, garlic, cream, parmesan, and a ton of basil. I listened to the Yankees lose to the Astros. I cleaned Chuck's litterbox three times. (Oy.) I talked to my canoe boy on the phone and heard all about his thrilling trip through the Dumoine River's whitewater. I beat Tom soundly at cribbage. And August sang its cricket song--a ballad, an elegy, a thin dry voice piping into pale and hazy air.

I did finish that editing project yesterday, and also managed to finish my weekly housework chores, so today is all mine, all mine. I'll go for a walk early, then work on a poem draft and my Whitman homework. I've got a lunch date, and then I'll go back to reading, garden a little, figure out something for dinner . . . who knows?--maybe I'll even nap, maybe I'll even sing.

I love the prospect of day filled with who knows? Chuck and I will rattle around our little house together like marbles dropping into a glass bowl, each private life clicking gently against the other. He will chase a leaf. I will turn a page.

Little Chuck is rolling around on my hands, squirming up to kiss my chin, and otherwise interfering greatly in all coherent thought. So, good morning! I have no ideas other than kitten!

**

Now, a minute or so later, he seems to have settled down to a low roar, and I am able to snag three more ideas: the deliciousness of hot black coffee on a coolish summer morning; a cardinal singing in the stagnant maples; the pleasure of having a stack of books to read.

I didn't finish the editing project yesterday, but that's because I was talking to Jeannie and Teresa for two hours about the poems of Patricia Smith, our favorite Virginia Woolf novels, the excitement of this year's teaching conference, and I would remember more if Chuck weren't trying to put his paws into my mouth (ick). Suffice it to say, it was exciting and synapse-triggering, as these conversations usually are, and it made me feel as if I'm not really as dumb as I've been feeling lately.

Today I have to return to the land of slog, but at least I'll get to go out to write tonight. And about that stack of books I mentioned: Teresa, Jeannie, and I are going to reread To the Lighthouse together. I've been talking to my friend Janet about Charlotte Bronte, and I've got a Whitman project underway, and I'm currently rereading Iris Murdoch's The Green Knight, and yesterday in a little free library around the corner I found Clarence Major's anthology Calling the Wind: Twentieth-Century African-American Short Stories. How I love books!

Now the coffee cup is empty and the cardinal is silent, but the books are piled up around me like birthday gifts, each a mystery eager to be opened . . . always a mystery, even when I think I know what's inside.

It's very dry outside--not a speck of rain in the foreseeable forecast. I am watering every afternoon, a tedious chore but necessary if I'm going to preserve any of this ravaged garden. Yesterday I picked a fistful of green beans, some lettuce, some basil, some blueberries: a sorry show of August bounty. Better than nothing, of course, but disheartening. 

Mostly I've been at my desk, chipping away at my editing project. Possibly I'll finish it today; if not, I should get it done by tomorrow. This afternoon I'm zooming with Teresa and Jeannie, which will be a pleasant vacation from all of this nose-to-the-grindstone. It will be Little Chuck's first zoom experience . . . Ruckus was always awful and had to be locked out of the room, but maybe Chuck will focus on being adorable and forget to wreck the place.

I've been reading Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva and now I've returned to Iris Murdoch's The Green Knight. But I haven't yet touched my stack of Whitman poems or my friends' manuscripts. Soon, soon. Once I get through this editing job, I'll find space to be a poet again.

We had yet another bat in our bedroom last night, and we are flummoxed. How do they keep getting in? We've hunted down and blocked every crack we can find, but the bats are still winning. It's very annoying for everyone, except for Little Chuck, who is thrilled.

Of course it is easy to thrill Little Chuck. Presently he is bashing around the living room in pursuit of a dry leaf--chirruping to himself, then suddenly freezing, stagey and wild-eyed, like Jerry Lewis crashing a party.

Other than kitten rowdiness, yesterday was quiet--mostly desk work, a bit of gardening, a dash out to the grocery store. For dinner I made bluefish fillets en papillote, steaming them with couscous, dill, parsley, red onion, and harissa and serving them alongside a corn and lettuce salad, with nectarine crisp for dessert. Parchment steaming is such an easy and delicious way to serve fillets; sometimes I forget how much I like the method. 

Today the air continues to be humid and smoke-hazy and rainless, but it's not overly hot, so that's one good thing. In a few minutes I'll hoist myself off this couch and get onto my mat, get out to the clotheslines, get back to my desk. Little Chuck, presently draped over my typing hands, is hoping to thwart these useful plans, but he'll be disappointed. Fortunately, however, he is an optimist and will cheer up as soon as I toss him a crumpled leaf.

A cool, still morning. Last night, driving back from Freeport, where we'd gone to watch an open-air movie, I caught sight of the moon, half-cookie-shaped and tinted a strange and brilliant orange. We wondered then if that was the result of forest-fire smoke, and I think it must have been because today's forecast predicts another plume over Maine. 

This morning I'll go out for a walk, and then I'll be back at my desk. I'm hoping to finish up the editing project this week, and then I'll turn my thoughts to a couple of poetry manuscripts I'm reading for friends. On Wednesday I'll be zooming with Jeannie and Teresa; on Friday I'm going to have lunch with a poet friend from San Francisco. I hope all of this poet contact rubs off on me and I suddenly start writing poems myself. It's not like I'm not writing, though I'm definitely not in the zone. But maybe once I get this editing manuscript done, my chore brain will return to its wandering ways.

I did catch up with herb harvesting this weekend, and I also got the mowing and trimming done, so this week I hope to slowly work on weeding and flower deadheading, if the afternoons aren't too hot. Tonight I'll make bluefish with dill sauce with maybe Yorkshire pudding on the side. We've already got an overload of desserts--both nectarine crisp and a batch of mint ice cream. Summer is the season of quick, do something with that fruit before the fruit flies move in, and then, voila, there's too much food.

I'm back to reading The Leopard, back to wondering what I'll read next when I've finished it for the twentieth time. I'm feeling pleased about the Red Sox, who are suddenly behaving like a competitive team. Little Chuck, who had a great night's sleep, is chasing an empty seed packet through a maze of chair legs in the dining room. T is making his lunch, and I am hoping that no groundhogs are eating my vegetables, and this day should be okay, this day should be fine, I am alive here on this little plot of earth, My heartbeat yearns . . . Are you there? it asks. Who is listening? it asks. What song should I sing?

Little Chuck is shocked by the articles in the New Yorker but he does enjoy the cartoons. What he doesn't enjoy is sitting in the window watching his family have fun outside without him. He wailed as I pulled garlic and prepped the bed for spinach. He wailed as T stacked lumber. We felt sad too. Ruckus was such company in the yard, and we'd love to mentor another neighborhood character. But even though Little Chuck promises to be good, we have our doubts.

Yesterday was my first big basil harvest--a dishpan piled with fragrant green that I transformed into pesto for the freezer. I also made ice cream with fresh mint, a wondrous discovery. I harvested a cabbage before the groundhog got it as well as a handful of green beans. Other than herbs, my only strong crops right now are lettuce, cucumbers, and chard. Better than nothing, though. Much better than nothing. With a groundhog in the picture, nothing is a strong possibility.

One thing I did yesterday was to write an open letter about the Conference on Poetry & Learning. If you're on my mailing list, you received it through email, and I posted it on Facebook as well.

A few things became clear after this year's conference, First, and most importantly, both participants and faculty love it, and believe in it, and want to keep coming back to Monson Arts. The participant evaluations I received brought me to tears: people were generous with praise, giddy with excitement about their own potential. Doing this work feels so important, so necessary, but it's also so thrilling. To work as an artist, seriously, with confidence and curiosity. To work without ego. This is what I want for participants and faculty, and it's what I want for myself.

The primary issue now is scholarship money. I could have filled every space if I'd had enough funds, but I didn't. We need to build a substantial, reliable scholarship fund, and I, who am terrible at asking for money, need to find a way to get better at it, and find people who have the means and willingness to respond.

If you didn't happen to see the letter I sent out yesterday, here it is, with details from the evaluations and a link to the Monson Arts donation portal--

****

This summer’s Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts was so special. Not only did I have the privilege of working with and alongside the magnificent faculty artists Teresa Carson, Gwyneth Jones, and Gretchen Berg, but the commitment and the brilliance of the participants was both exhilarating and humbling, in all the best ways. We experimented, we collaborated; we were awkward and hilarious, and the words and the feelings poured forth.

Here's what the participants had to say about our week together:

This conference feeds educators and artists both practically and personally. There is an understanding that who we are is not separate from what we do and that we need to tend to and nurture ourselves both professionally and personally. The facilitators of this conference help foster an environment of collaboration and curiosity that enriches the participants at all levels. I walk away with new understandings as an artist, an educator, and a human being in this world. 

Everything about this conference is set up to create an open and supportive environment for participants to explore the possibilities of creative expression, to experience new ways to write and teach. We play and we make things, make discoveries, and take delight in each other’s work. It’s quite remarkable, created by remarkable teachers. 

The faculty provided a unique and edifying experience with a variety of activities. This was one of the best conferences I have ever attended; it enriched my teaching as well as my own personal writing. I will definitely attend again in the future!

Monson Arts offers stellar time and place for every imagination to connect with others and to enlarge one's consciousness of what matters most in life. It's worth every effort in any season and season of life to experience the Conference on Poetry and Learning in this small town of extraordinary beauty and taste on the shores of Lake Hebron.

I found so much hope and joy in creating in community.

I'm so grateful for this beautiful experience. I wrote, I read, I swam in the lake, I kayaked, I wrote, I ate THE BEST food . . . it's been so wonderful. I'm so relaxed and happy; it's been a huge confidence boost. Seriously, it's so inspiring to be in a safe space, a community, of writers who are so nice and supportive. I can't even describe how magical, inspirational, comforting, and cathartic it has been. I remembered I'm a poet, a really good one, actually.

Not your conventional conference. More like a week of magic. 

The combination of skillful and approachable content providers, comfortable accommodations, great food, Maine woods, and a beautiful lake is unbeatable. Add a charming public library, a general store with an ice cream stand, and you will have an image of a summer week at Monson Arts. I dreamed about Monson and the human connections I made there for three nights after I came home. That has never happened to me after a workshop anywhere else. 

The Monson Arts Conference on Poetry & Learning is an extraordinary experience. If you like writing poetry or would like to explore your own writer self, this is a thoughtful and engaging program. As a teacher, you will take away a lot of great ideas to bring back to your classroom. As a writer, you'll learn exciting ways to engage with your work. Whether you are a teacher or a writer or both, this conference offers so much! 

But here’s the deal, friends. Many participants—past, present, and future--are facing the fact that their institutions are increasingly reluctant to financially support professional development. Others have no institutional support whatsoever. So in order to keep supporting teachers and poets in need, we must build a reliable scholarship fund. If you are able to donate to our scholarship fund, in whatever amount, we’d be so grateful. Every cent will go directly to participants who cannot otherwise afford to attend. And if you could commit to an annual donation, especially one that would cover full tuition for a teacher or poet in need, that would be amazing. Contact Chantal Harris, the executive director at Monson Arts, to discuss how best to set up an annual gift to the program (director@monsonarts.org).

Please be in touch with any questions. I so hope to see you in Monson with us next summer—

XX

Dawn

Suddenly autumn feels very close. Outside it's only 55 degrees, and the air is very still and dry and crisp, a relief and a surprise after a week or more of high humidity and Canadian smoke.

Little Chuck woke me at 5 a.m. by chasing his tail all over the bed. The good news is that he wasn't doing this at 2 a.m., which, in kitten land, is a highly respectable time to be busy. To our benefit, Little Chuck is an excellent sleeper, with a more or less human clock. I do wish he wouldn't start his night by stuffing his entire body directly under my chin, but he does eventually move, and usually I wake up to find him coiled between our backs, like he's a hockey referee breaking up a fight.

Now he's sitting happily in an open window keeping a sharp eye out for groundhogs, and I am enjoying a vacation from trying to type while he's also trying to type. Upstairs T is sleeping blissfully through his weekday alarm time, and now Little Chuck pat-pat-pats down the stairs and I hear the crunch of chow between his tiny sharp teeth. Saturday is off to a fine start for all.

Today I'll probably work outside--do some weeding and mowing, harvest garlic, plant fall spinach--and I'd like to mess around with a poem, and I should get started on the Whitman reading I'm doing with Teresa, and I wonder what I'll be making for dinner. This weekend there's a big music festival happening down along Back Cove, and I suspect traffic will be snarled and all day the aether will resonate with unidentifiable bass lines.

Little Chuck, who has wedged himself against my laptop and is now staring enthusiastically into my face, is confident that the day will be great. He is a thorough optimist, is Little Chuck. Considering that he spent his first weeks of life in dreadful hoarding conditions, and that he's still a skinny up-and-comer after that rough start, his daily delight in the world is touching in the extreme.

A soft rain fell all night, and this morning the maples are dripping and the crickets are singing and a purring, wide-awake kitten is sitting on my hands as I try to type. Suddenly it's Friday, suddenly August--somehow this week has flown by. I suppose that's Little Chuck at work: he's a sunbeam, for sure.

Last night I went out to write and now I have a couple of new drafts to play with. I do have editing to work on today, and floors to clean, and sheets to wash. I need to get onto my mat, and haul the trash and recycling to the curb. I have a friend's manuscript to read. But it's sweet to have those drafts floating in my notebook, waiting. And who knows? Maybe I'll find the nest of an hour today, when the poems rise up to greet me.

Through the open window, an unknown bird repeats, repeats, repeats its metallic squeak. Summer . . . every year an elegy.