It's cold out there on this dark morning . . . a windy blast of winter into our cautious budding spring. But life insists, no matter what the wind argues. Yesterday my best friend's daughter gave birth to a baby girl, and I feel all kinds of joy about that tiny fighter, scrapping her way into daylight.

I slept badly last night, as usual . . . this time with intermittent odd dreams about trying to take violin lessons from Elizabeth Warren, who kept telling me she doesn't play the violin. Now I'm drinking my black coffee and attempting to feel enthusiastic about cramming all of my weekend chores into a single day. Tomorrow I have to drive up to Monson for a Monday class, so I don't have the option of puttering slowly through my housework. I'm looking forward to the class, though. We're going to focus on revising the group draft that the kids wrote last time. I'm also going to have them work on identifying their own writing prompts. It seems important to train them to notice writing triggers in what they read and discuss, not just depend on a teacher to prompt them. Along the way, we'll read pieces by Leo Connellan, Tracy K. Smith, and Wislawa Symborska: all poems in which the speaker is observing young people.

Lately I've been thinking about point of view in poetry--both its delights and dangers. As I think I mentioned, I recently wrote a small essay about Longfellow for my friend Teresa's email series, an essay that did not spend much time on the problematics of Longfellow's public poetry--by which I mean large narrative poems such as "Hiawatha" and "Evangeline." To a contemporary eye, both poems romanticize (at best) and racialize (at worst) topics that don't belong to the poet: an upper-middle-class white Protestant Harvard guy. A more historical critique might argue that Longfellow was a humanist who was earnestly trying to give voice to groups that were, at that time, more or less voiceless: Native Americans and the Franco population of Atlantic Canada and northern Maine.

Parallel issues exist in current work, of course. I think of poems in which a male speaker passionately idealizes/worships/desires/instructs an often younger female entity--sometimes human, sometimes metaphoric. I'm sure you're familiar with that trope: it's been a constant for millennia, and it lies at the root of some gorgeous poetry. Some gorgeous old poetry. In contemporary work, the trope clanks and sours. I think of Roethke's "Elegy for Jane," which now makes me wince. If I were a journal editor, I would find it difficult to publish such a piece, no matter how beautifully it was written. And yet, of course, the beauty would exist, despite the poet's blindness or indifference to his own subtext.

For the past couple of weeks, we've had some major household turmoil here--not my story, so for the moment I won't go into details about it. But yesterday was a turning point: a series of good things happened, the best possible sort of resolution looks close, and Tom and I walked down to a local restaurant last night to celebrate with some crab and a couple of beers.

Really, it's been that kind of winter: worries, relief, worries, relief. I suppose these are the normal stepping stones into our inevitable disasters.

Let me just say: every good thing should fall into the lap of this man who has labored so hard and selflessly all of his life, while his barely employable wife has fluttered among dandelions and chickweed.

In the morning I copyedited, and then, in the early afternoon, I walked up to the local coffeeshop to meet with a friend and talk about goals for his manuscript. I still can't get over that I'm actually living a city writer's life: coffeeshops and craft conversations, stopping at the meat market afterward, walking home along buckling sidewalks as the wind whips through the Norway maples. What happened to that woman who spent her days shoveling manure and milking goats and lugging small boys out of the forest? How did she turn into this one?

What else is going on? (1) I sketched out a poem draft yesterday that quickly morphed into a fistful of awkwardness, so that was no fun. It's amazing how bad poems persist. You'd think I'd have learned to avoid them by now. (2) In the mail I received not one but four separately wrapped copies of the new Beloit Poetry Journal. I have no idea why. Please tell me you want one so I don't have to pitch them into the recycling.

By the way, here's a link to my book review in that issue. I've got a poem in there too, but it's not online.

 Yesterday I worked at my desk all morning, took a break to vote, then edited for a couple more hours . . . and then I went outside and started raking mulch off my front garden beds. Everywhere, green spikes!--crocuses, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths. The peonies are thrusting up their red fingers; sorrel is greening; columbine is unfolding its tiny complicated curls. I meant to go for a bike ride, but I was too entranced by spring.

Last night we got a little rain, and today will be windy and warmish. I forgot, in Harmony, that anyone could love March.

* * *

. . . and now a brief word about the election.

My preferred candidate is apparently not popular, for reasons that, to me, seem entirely sexist. However, this election is too important; I will not waste time holding grudges.

At heart I am a progressive. However, I worry about the leading progressive candidate's undisclosed health records; the fact that he seems, on the surface, unconcerned about verified Russian interference in his favor; the peculiar support that Trump is giving him via tweet; and what seems to me the likelihood that the GOP is preparing to release sleazy information that will sandbag him if he becomes the chosen Democratic candidate. Also, he doesn't appear at all willing to compromise nor does he work with other people easily.

The leading centrist candidate is a bumbler, a throwback, a regular old cog in the machine. However, he seems to terrify both Trump and the Russians, so that's a big plus. I'm interested in how well he's suddenly doing in the primaries. Does this mean that moderate Repubs are re-registering as Democrats in order to vote? If so, that seems to be a sign that he has a chance to beat the man who must be beaten.

In 100 percent good news: Maine's anti-vaxxers were solidly trounced at the polls.

I came home from yesterday's class so exhausted that I worried I was coming down with something. But maybe it was just plain old residual tiredness: all that restless dreaming catching up with me.

Today: editing, and prepping for a manuscript conference, and maybe messing around with a sloppy new draft, if I can find the time. And voting, of course. The temperature in Portland is supposed to climb sharply into the 50s, with rain tonight. We may be on the cusp of a sudden spring. Outside, a cardinal is singing and singing, as if he believes it. Maybe he'll convince me to get Vita out of the shed and pump up her tires and rub off her dust and take her out for a spin.

For some reason I'm feeling disoriented this morning--maybe a little overwhelmed by all of the job switching I do: teaching editing manuscript reading laundry hanging cat box cleaning floor washing Rilke copying Updike commenting grocery shopping dinner planning toilet scrubbing workshop planning insurance-company complaining Longfellow-essay writing firewood hauling flagstone laying . . . blink/do one thing/blink/do another/ and hardly anyone notices you've done anything at all.

Ancient History

Dawn Potter

Baby forgets the rain.

Forgets how the lamplight

spilled onto his page of homework.

He forgets the scent of dust,

that old wet dog in the chair,

that radio spitting its crackle of news.

Forgets the shouting in the kitchen,

the way her voice rose, the way

her plate slapped down on the counter.

He forgets the slam of the window,

the cigarette ash drifting,

the way her eyes tracked him

when he dropped his pencil on the floor

Forgets her skinny fingers,

their filthy sharp nails,

her stare like a chain

yanking him underwater.

Forgets how bad she smelled.

All he recollects

is how she crashed back and forth,:

charging from burner to sink to burner—

scald slice boil scald slice boil scald slice boil—

her flailing arms bloody with tomatoes.

And Baby still sees those seven hot jars, 

mashed vegetable flesh straining against the glass:

            how they hissed

as she yanked each from the canner

and flung them screaming,

            one after one after one,

out the yawing front door.

[poem previously appeared in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall]

Seventeen degrees this morning, and yesterday's wind was biting. Yet tulips, crocuses, daffodils are spiking through the frosted leaves of my front garden. Sorrel and garlic are stirring, and shrubs are stretching fingers of new twigs. We still have snow piles and ice slicks, but the ground has softened and, where the sunlight strikes them, patches of grass are beginning to green.

Compared to Harmony, spring comes early in Portland. I always hated March up north: I longed for spring and all I got was snowstorms. Now spring arrives before I'm even ready for it. We may get a snowstorm here too, but it will melt away quickly. The sea winds have shifted; the sun glows with new power. My sap is running and I'm itching to dig.

Not yet, however. Yesterday I picked up sticks and studied the terrain, but the wind is too sharp to start peeling away mulch. Later this week, when temperatures rise, I'll consider pruning the rose bushes. Today I have to stick to housework.

I'll be on the road tomorrow, teaching in southern Maine, and then I'll fall back into a week of editing. The work is piling up, and now weekend classes and presentations are looming as well. In spring, an organization's mind turns to thoughts of poetry workshops. . . .

At least I'm not going to AWP this week. But a friend of mine, another Maine poet, is leading a session in support of writers who work outside the academy. She's asked a number of us to comment on what that's like. Here's what I told her:

Advantages of being outside the academy. I don’t have an MFA, but I do have eight books of prose and poetry, all with standard royalty contracts. In other words, working and living outside the academy has, in many ways, given me considerable freedom in terms of both reading and writing autonomy and the richness of material that arises from my daily life. For more than two decades I homesteaded in the rural north country of Maine. I did not know any poets who lived within an hour’s drive of my house. So I had to become self-sufficient in the craft, and that turned out to be an accidental gift: I learned to trust my eyes and my ears, my observations; I read voraciously and deeply. Being alone transformed me into a poet. 

Disadvantages of being outside the academy. I earn almost no money. I have been extremely isolated. I find I cannot apply for fellowships, grants, or residencies because I don’t have any famous friends who will write letters of recommendation for me. Without an MFA I cannot hope for even a community-college adjunct job, though I’m an accomplished and experienced teacher of poetry. I haven’t been able to spend money on getting an MFA because I’ve been putting my two children through college and our family is just barely surviving on my husband’s carpentry earnings. I cannot afford to pay my way to AWP. Twice, in the past, my publisher hired me to work at the AWP bookfair, but I was so shy among strangers that I was afraid to attend any sessions in case people figured out how much of a nobody I was. Though I have published many books, they are rarely reviewed because I have no network of colleagues or mentors. Shyness feeds shyness. Of course I assume that no one knows who I am, so I tend to retreat inside myself and keep it that way.

These comments make the situation seem more black-and-white than it is. I have found ways to teach, but the work is irregular and often feels like guerrilla warfare: drop out of a tree, throw some poems around, vanish. My position at the Frost Place is a miracle: on paper, I would not seem to be the top candidate for the job, but the stars aligned and I try to stay worthy of them. Likewise, the opportunity at Monson Arts: for once, my skill set (knows how to talk to kids from the sticks) fits the job description.

Nor do I repine about my outside-the-academy status . . . at least I repine far less than I once did. To be honest, I hate clubby situations such as AWP that ramp up my anxiety and my imposter syndrome. I'm tense about excessive traveling and talking to strangers; I hate competing for status; I don't want to teach five sections of Comp. I wouldn't mind some book reviews. I wouldn't mind being treated like an equal. But I've dug my own hole, and it's turned into a rambling burrow, and you're welcome to dive down and curl up by my fire if you're out there in the wild wood, lost and hungry and with the weasels and stoats on your tail.