For whatever reason, my writing group was especially fun last night. Everyone was in a party spirit, our dear Betsy had recovered well enough from her concussion to take part, and people were writing like fiends. Everyone's draft felt like a marvel. It was thrilling to listen to them, thrilling even to read my own.

I brought along a prompt based on the Swift poem I posted in the comments a few days ago. What that means is that the conversations I've been having with Teresa are now bleeding into the conversations I'm having with the Portland poets . . . i.e., my inner life is swirling beyond my thoughts into chatter and experiment, which is exciting. Poetry as social currency is a dry way to put it, but what I mean is that art-as-public-life doesn't need to have anything to do with publication or performance but may simply be "Hey, pals! The eighteenth century is talking to us!"

This reminds me: a couple of days ago the folksinger Dave Mallett suddenly died. Dave was a thorough Mainer, born in Piscataquis County and living most of his life there, but he was also a legend in the folk world--most famously for writing "The Garden Song" ("inch by inch, row by row . . . "), which Pete Seeger made legendary. He performed widely, and his children also became traveling musicians. (His sons are the Mallett Brothers Band, an alt-rock band with a wide New England following.) In the days when I lived in the homeland, I'd run into Dave often in the grocery store. We'd chat a bit; sometimes he'd appear at the shows I played with Doughty Hill. He was a presence--someone who had managed to become a national figure in his chosen medium while remaining a regular local guy.

I've been thinking of him this week. "How rare that is, to be both local and extremely serious," I started saying to myself, and then I thought, "Maybe not so rare." Alan Bray, who teaches the visual arts arm of the Monson high school program I lead: he's another one of that ilk--trained in Italy, selling his paintings in NYC, but never leaving home. Then there's my friend Steve Cayard, a nationally renowned birchbark canoe builder, tucked into his quiet shop in the woods. What I'm saying, I guess, is that art-as-public-life can be as simple as sitting around a dinner table talking about the grove where you harvested spruce roots for sewing birchbark or which local hayfield is most beautiful under the setting sun.

***

Speaking of art in the homeland--

Soon Monson Arts will be opening registration for the 2025 Conference on Poetry and Learning, and I'll be able to announce our guest faculty and talk about a few of the adventures that Teresa and I are planning for that week. Last year's conference was a real eye-opener for me, in lots of personal ways. But amazingly it also turned out to be a boon for Monson Arts . . . which is to say, our classes filled and we netted a small profit. Meanwhile, we've also made the decision to strictly limit class numbers to 15 people, which means that we will maintain the intimacy of the experience but will never be a giant moneymaker.

For those who are new to this blog: the Conference for Poetry and Learning (which I direct) is dedicated to helping teachers and other community builders bring poetry into their workplaces, into conversation with other art forms, and into the daily civil discourse this nation so desperately needs. Many of the conference participants have institutional support: that is, some or all of their tuition comes from school professional development funds. But others work in poor schools or outside of institutions altogether. Last year we gathered together enough scholarship money to bring in several people who would not otherwise have been able to attend, and I hope that will again be the case this year.

And as you know, I'm also devoted to Monson's high school studio art program, which allows a cohort of rural students to spend an entire school year focusing closely on their writing or visual art. That program depends on outside support to survive. So here, too, we would welcome anything you could toss into the pot to make sure that these kids, many from poor isolated northern communities, continue to have the opportunity to live in the world of art.

The Monson Arts donation button allows you to choose where you'd like to allocate your gift. If you're able to help us keep these programs going, all of us at Monson would be endlessly grateful.