For whatever reason, the poem of mine that Vox Populi published yesterday attracted a lot of interest (clarification: a lot for me just means some in regular parlance). I wonder if people like sonnets, or simply the notion of composing a poem out of scraps of ideas and reactions. I worried that the ending was too pat, but apparently nobody else did. Anyway, it kept me in a bit of a flurry all day long.

Today I'll be reentering standard grunt life: calling the insurance company to complain about a charge and then driving three hours north to Monson. I'm tired already, as I spent most of the night having hot flashes. When will they ever go away?

I'm glad, for comfort, I have my grey couch, my red bathrobe, my white cup and saucer. A lamp. An empty grate. A jar of hyacinths.

I've been reading Peter Carey's A Long Way from Home, a novel about an Australian auto race in the 1950s, and George Saunders's story collection The Tenth of December. They're not The Makioka Sisters by any means, but what is? However, they were both published in the 21st century, so I feel very modern.

Tonight, in my Monson digs, I might start working on an essay on Longfellow's sonnet "Mezzo Cammin," which I'm guest-writing for my friend Teresa's weekly email subscription letter, La poesia della settimana. (Talk to me more if you want to subscribe; I'll let her know. Her letters are smart and wonderful and clear and curious and full of heart.)

Or I might read a friend's short-story draft, or another friend's article-in-progress. Or I might watch a movie. Or I might take a bath and go to bed early.

Tomorrow I'll run the kids through a "rhymed couplet speed dating" game and then introduce them to Afaa Michael Weaver's bop form. My plan is to have them write a group bop: one student assigned to the refrain, small groups assigned to each stanza, with revision tasks spread among the different parties. This is my new experimental approach to revision teaching: How can I have students do it for commonsense, on-the-job reasons? How can I make it a natural element of the project at hand?