I want to thank everyone who listened in to last night's reading. We had a crowd--more than fifty people from all over the place, some strangers to me, many of them very dear . . . not bad, really, for two people who aren't great at hawking their wares. Maybe we sold a couple of books, and maybe we introduced a few people to each other's work, and without a doubt I am taking a deep breath and crossing Nerve-Wracking Event Number 1 off my list.

It's extraordinarily difficult to sit still and be praised. I think that is the hardest thing about these sorts of occasions. I am so glad that people care about my poems, that a poet of Jeannie's stature admires them, but I want to sink into the earth when anyone says so in public. It's so dumb.

I do like reading in public, though. It's an interesting conundrum, being an introvert who is also a performer. I get keyed up beforehand and am wrung out afterward, but the actual act is absorbing and exciting. I've talked to numerous other public performers who have a similar relationship to their shows, perhaps because off-stage preparation often requires deep solitude, hours and years of it.

Anyway, this morning I am tired and little headachy, but that's okay as I don't have any pressing obligations for the day. I'll go for an early walk, I'll work on some class plans, and in the afternoon I'll get into the garden: tear out tired plants, put in some tulip and daffodil bulbs, and maybe my garlic too, if the order arrives today.

Last night, after my reading, I was washing dishes and thinking, This is what it means to be successful. I write poems. I run water. It's as simple as that.

In the old days, in Harmony, I used to start a fire in the wood stove as soon as I got out of bed and then start the coffee on the kitchen range. But in town I've lost the fire-is-the-center-of-my-life habit. So this morning I fumbled around a bit, trying to do both tasks at once. I figured things out, though, and now I am drinking hot coffee and watching flames catch in the kindling, and outside rain is pattering against the windows, and this is exactly how a wet October morning in Maine ought to start.

This wood stove isn't big enough to combat real winter weather; I'll have to revert to the furnace soon enough. But in these transitional seasons, it's perfect, and we've got plenty of firewood, so at least on the days I'm working from home, a morning fire makes sense. Besides, it is so extremely pleasant. Why not wake up to beauty?

Yesterday was restorative: a slow waking, an unstructured day. In the afternoon T went out to visit with some acquaintances, and I thought of coming along too, but suddenly my introvert buzzer went off and I realized that I needed at least one day when I wasn't in a classroom or a reading or a writing group--a day to be comfortably unsociable, keeping myself to myself, storing up energy for this week's onslaught of publicity.

So, instead, I brought in fresh parsley and mint and hung them in the back room to dry. I took down the already dry basil and packed it into a mason jar. I baked a walnut cake. I sat by the fire and read about King Philip's War. I went for a walk and then, later, another walk. I roasted two small whole mackerel with preserved lemons and fresh oregano. I roasted kale and potatoes and made a tomato, feta, and mint salad. I tried to stay away from screens and rest my weary eyes. It was a quiet day, homebound, slowly busy, and I tried to make the most of it.

Because today I am back in the thick of things: first, prepping hard for tonight's book launch; then switching over to an editing project that has been languishing . . . a day of cranking out work, making sure I get onto my exercise mat, taming my nerves, babying my eyes--in short, putting myself together for a show.

Here's the link again, should you be interested--7 p.m. this evening. The event will run like a webinar, I'm told, so I won't be able to see your faces, though I will see a list of attendees. 

Talk to you tomorrow, on the other side.

I slept in till 6:30 this morning, a rare and welcome Sunday-morning loll. And today I have nowhere to go and nothing to do . . . well, actually, I have plenty to do, but none of it requires a schedule or a timesheet, so I will idle here in my couch corner and pretend I'm completely untethered.

Yesterday, while I was upstairs teaching, T was downstairs installing the first batch of finished cupboard doors. As you can see, they have radically changed the look of the kitchen. Instead of a clutter of busy-looking shelves and open closets, we suddenly have sleekness, quiet, elegance. We are both feeling the jolt: who are we, to possess such an uppity-looking room? Of course T is a master carpenter; he routinely builds this sort of beauty for his rich clients. But our own houses tend to stay half-done. We aren't used to gloss.

Outside, low clouds have settled in--rain in the forecast, a wet afternoon and night, a wet tomorrow, a long slow storm. I haven't yet turned on the furnace: the little wood stove is just right for banishing the small chill of a rainy autumn day, and in a minute I'll get up and light a fire, embrace this Sunday at home.

I think yesterday's class went well; I hope it did. Always, teaching is an improv dance. I jump into and out of the plans I've laboriously written up; conversations flash; lines suddenly undress themselves.

How I long to be a poet.

I did what I hoped to do yesterday: I finished the difficult editing project; I did the grocery shopping; I took a little time off from working; I went to bed early. So even though I'm back on the clock today, I'm feeling reasonably well rested, more or less ready to pitch forward into the waves.

Today's class will be a generative-writing session based around Keats's notion of negative capability. We'll be reading poems, talking about poems, writing poems, sharing poems. As workdays go, it should be a good one. My only worry is my eyes: they are not in top condition after that emergency editing intervention, and Zoom is always hard on them. I hope I can blink my way through.

[By the way, this class is full, but I've still got two openings in my November 9-10 "Revision Intensive" weekend. Maybe you'd like to be there too?]

This morning I want to ease myself into writing and talking space . . . these few words to you, a slow cup of coffee, a small undemanding walk, a shower, a bit of housework : filling firewood boxes, folding laundry, sweeping the kitchen floor : reading through the day's centerpiece poems, shaping thoughts, sharpening pencils, settling into the unknown . . . 

The coming days and weeks are a tumble of work--readings, classes, editing--but today I will try to stay in the now: just these hours, just these poems, just these people.

That in itself can be hard work. 

 

For each of my Monson classes, I find a poem or a line or a sentence that seems, in some way, to capture an element of what I want to share with the students that day. On Wednesday I shared this small poem by Hanshan, and I've been thinking of it often since then--the miracle of hearing a voice from so long ago speak so confidently, so poignantly, of his own mind and imagination.

Sometimes I worry that I am too immersed in the small things of the self, the body, the earth, yet Hanshan's words reassure me that this really is a path for a poet in the world. I find I cannot scream my ideological fears. But what of the red of these late roses? I cannot stop gazing into their velvet hearts.

Last night, I went out to write, and my friends there spent a half hour or more planning exactly how they were going to help out at my book launch next Thursday--who would do an introduction, who would read, who would bring cups and plates and wine and cheese . . . Betsy said to me, almost sternly, "We are a community, of course." I felt giddy, I felt held, I felt like crying. What a gift to receive, so late in my life: a crowd of poets.

Today, I'll be back at my desk, finishing (I hope) what has turned into a very problematic editing project. I'll go grocery shopping, I'll go for a walk, I'll try to take a bit of time off, given that I have to teach all day tomorrow. But I got the house cleaned yesterday; I washed and dried and folded piles of laundry, I took my car to the garage, I carried firewood and cleaned the stove and put clean sheets on the bed, and "My mind is like the autumn moon / clear and bright in a pool of jade / nothing can compare / what more can I say."

I walked into the house late yesterday afternoon and realized that I had to make sauce, pronto. The bowls on the counter were piled with too-ripe tomatoes, and the vines outside were dotted with too-ripe tomatoes. There was no time to waste so I dropped my bags and went to work. But eventually, once I got the ingredients into the pot, I lit a fire in the wood stove, emptied the dishwasher, swept the kitchen floor, turned on radio for the Mets game, and let myself relax into the idea of being home--which was not exactly rest but was better than rushing around with overflowing colanders of vegetables.

My teaching day went well, but it was tiring. These early sessions are hard because I have to focus so hard on making magic: that is, modeling a complete commitment to the exigencies of the art to a group of teenagers who are excited and intrigued but still shy and prickly. The magic only works if I throw myself to the winds . . . if I leap straight into writing drafts and talking about the work in ways that are actually self-revelatory and emotional. If the kids see me doing that, they start to do it too. But the transition is never easy. I am always jangled beforehand, always coaching myself through my reserve. And afterward I am exhausted.

No one has ever told these kids that art is an inner flame . . . though they have felt it themselves, and they haven't known what to do about it. So this is the magic spell I have to cast: to bring a group of teenagers into tender communion with their own fire.

When I watch their faces open into that recognition, I want to cry. It is so worth sacrificing my own shyness.

Back in the homeland. A deep evening chill. Ambling down the dirt roads, up the lanes of the empty camps, and the sky unfolding colors, the last sun rays glinting on the crowns of the oaks; happy to be wearing hat and gloves, to return to a warm house, crackle of kindling, soup on the stove. Then early to bed, line-dried sheets, dreams of babies, and now the slow wakeup, listening to a speckle of rain on the metal roof, wondering if we got a frost last night, wondering if I will remember how to do my job, how to heave myself out of bed and into a car and onto the road and into a poem,