Day 5. Always goodbye and hello . . . the conference ends at noon, the Writing Intensive begins at 2. We've been writing hard all week, but suddenly Teresa drops us into another universe, where everything is linked and vibrating and waiting for our attention; where time becomes the structure of thought and our inner and exterior lives are brought into conversation. I am exhausted but also I am writing and writing and writing.

Day 4 is behind us. Stunning participant readings, complex conversations about teaching and poetic engagement. Sorry you couldn't see actually see my reading on FB Live last night: a Zoom glitch keeps locking our executive director out of her account, so she hasn't been able to make the link. However, we've recorded my reading and Patricia Smith's, and I'll let you know when those are posted . . . I hope later today.

This morning I'll be leading a lesson on Andrew Marvell's poem "The Garden." Then the conference will shift and change and some people will say goodbye and some will arrive . . . and the Writing Intensive will begin, and I will step back from teaching and return to being a writer.

Day 3. Patricia Smith. A force and a whirlwind: so generous, so intensely focused on pushing us not to turn away from deep pain and horror. Her presentation and her reading were stunning. I do not know another poet who can write of a baby's drowning and make both the terror and beauty so stark. Her presence at the conference was, as my co-director Kerrin texted me afterward, "deeply complex as well as uber practical. Master class." My response was "Exactly! And scary in a way that I find very exciting."

I'm reading tonight. It supposedly will be available to anyone via Facebook Live, whether or not you have a Facebook account. Here's the link. Starts at 7 p.m. ET.

Day 2 is behind us. We had a terrific presentation from the poet Julia Bouwsma, who had the brilliant idea  of speaking to us as a student rather than as a teacher. What did we learn as a student that hindered our growth into the art? Was there a poem in particular that a teacher damaged for us? What could we have learned instead from that poem?

I myself had a terrible experience with Frost's "Birches" in tenth grade. When I look at it now, it is a poem about childhood solitude, the pleasures of earth and air, of becoming acquainted with the wild . . . all things that have mattered to me intensely in my life. Did we ever talk about these matters in tenth grade? No. We had to scan the poem to death. It was designed, as far as I knew, to be torn to pieces.

I think this is why I refuse to memorize the names of metrical rhythms. I can hear a dactyl, but I can't spout off the definition of a dactyl. The brutal academicizing of poetry was poison to me. I hated it. I still hate it.

The first day of the conference is now behind me, and all went remarkably smoothly. No Zoom catastrophes, no participant emergencies, and the curveball I tossed in my opening lesson was hit out of the park. That curveball was my complete switch-up in the way I introduced the year's featured Frost poem, "The Last Mowing." After dictating it aloud, I have generally stepped us straight into discussion questions, modeling how teachers can guide students into conversation around the materials of a poem rather than its meaning. Yesterday, however, I followed up the dictation by immediately giving participants a writing prompt triggered by a phrase in the poem. In other words, dictation and creation before analysis. My surprise move went really well: participants jumped directly into the emotional tenor of Frost's original, beginning to explore ideas, language, and sound that linked back to his, all without being told "We're now going to explore ideas, language, and sound as they relate to a Robert Frost poem." So I was pretty happy.

After yesterday's expected but terrible SCOTUS decision to strike down Roe v. Wade, my place in the world feels much dimmer. It's notable how hard this hits, even for those of us who are no longer of child-bearing age. Roe v. Wade became law in 1973, when I was nine years old. It vanished when I was fifty-seven. So I grew up into adolescence, into young adulthood, with that right enshrined: I had the power to decide. Given how powerless I felt in so many other ways, given the confusions of sexual and gender politics, of the fears and indignities that women have always had to take for granted, the knowledge that I had the right to decide about childbearing was an oak tree. As it happened, I did not have an accidental pregnancy, but I could have. Like most women of my age, I had scares. I longed for children; and even at the wrong times and with the wrong person, I probably would not have opted for an abortion. But that would have been my choice. 

The history of women is, in large part, the history of living under the control of men. And thus choice is no small thing. To choose. To be in charge of deciding. 

And now we've slid back into the maw.

* * *

Today the conference begins, so my time with you may be quick and scattered . . . or I may be writing reams: who knows? My study is tidy and organized. I vacuumed all of the crumbs out of my new poet chair, and picked a big Zoom bouquet of sweet peas and yarrow and peony buds. I am ready with lessons and prompts and ice tea, and am hoping that my internet connection won't let me down. We've got a beautiful group of participants, familiar faces and new ones, and I am ready to sink down into the world of words and emotion.

We live in a nation in torment. We are a cadre of poets. There will be tears. But it's good to have people who can cry together.

As you know, I was a dedicated forager and scavenger long before those avocations were hip. I have filled blog posts with lists of things I have found on the street, and I am proud to say that I can now add: "new chair for my study" to those achievements. T and I were walking home from buying beer last night, and there, sitting on the curb of our very own street, was this nice blue chair: not ripped up by cats or covered in stains, not smelling of mildew or terrible fluids, all of the legs securely fastened, comfortable yet small enough to move around the room for Zoom purposes. So we lugged it home and up the stairs, and there it sits, waiting to make its conference debut tomorrow.

The first thing I did was send a photo of it to my older son, because J is the king of scavenging. We brought him up well, apparently, as he has managed to furnish a large portion of his apartment with things he's found in alleys. He also scavenged this pink-nosed kitten in a subway stop . . . or rather, he was accosted by a man with a bag of kittens and ended up with an unweaned little screecher who, as you can see, is now feeling quite at home with his less than thrilled new big sister.

Yesterday's faculty meeting went well, our attendance list is growing, I'll be busy today with bits and pieces of conference prep, and I'll try to get some household stuff out of the way as well. This is the hard thing about running a Zoom conference: I have all of the home pressures and all of the work pressures at the same time. But now the fridge is full of quickish dinner options that T and I can pull together as needed, and if I can get the grass mowed and some mild housework done, then I'll feel a bit better about shutting my door for five days.