Not easy. Not as hard as you might think. Excruciating. Humiliating. Inspiring. Challenging. Heartbreaking. Exhilirating. Okay, enough, enough already! When you come to Squaw Valley for the poetry week, what you sign on for is to write a poem a day, have it done each morning by 9 AM and be in workshop awake and ready to read your poem to the 12 other poets and the presiding senior poet. Everyone comes with their own intentions: to break through some old habits and play with new ideas, forms, language or to focus on a particular subject matter, writing poems that have a link in some obvious, or not-so-obvious way or to experiment purely with what comes up on any given day, to manifest material that can then be molded into a more cohesive and refined piece of writing.

My focus this time was to try something a little different each day, mostly to do with the structure of the poem, as well as being open to how that might affect the subject matter, or vice-versa. One day I wrote an abecedarian poem (the first word of each line begins with a letter of the alphabet in a descending order A-Z). On another day, inspired by Dean Young’s craft talk on the “primative poem,” I was inspired to create a chant-type poem using rhythm and a type of musical score to write an “Ode to the Flame, the Teardrop, the Flute.” On the last day I was so exhausted (physically and creatively) that I wrote a letter, a funny letter, to my fellow poets, trying to lighten my own load, as well as theirs, as we were all on our last legs that Saturday morning.

There are days during the week when the poem pops out as sweet and close-to-perfect as can be and there are days when the battle has been joined and you joust with your mind and the words on the page and your idea of how that poem is supposed to look and feel and sound…ultimately, though, the week is about going there…wherever the muse takes you and keeping up! I’m sure we all had those days when we were ready to hang up our Thesaurus and jump in one of those rubber rafts cruising down the Truckee River, but the truth is, that no one, not even the seasoned, published poets, knows for sure what’s available on the cosmic poetry highway on any given day. You show up with pen in hand with an idea and a willingness to go the distance…that’s all you can do. There’s always that possibility that magic will happen and a poem will be born and live long enough to actually be heard by others, to be a force for good in this crazy world.

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Here are some more photos from the week of poets at work….

What’s that thing you’re pecking at, Christina??

Sharon Olds & Michael in one of the “morning meetings” as Sharon preferred to call them.

Harryette Mullen with Jenny doing a “Poem First Aid” Session under the sparkling aspens.

Lori getting her poem ready in the SV central headquarters. Hopefully, this one won’t get eaten by the computer.

Dean Young & C.D. Wright signing books after the Thursday night reading.

Sharon at the Thursday reading–always a hint of humor, a deep well of passion.

Dean reading his poems–funny and poignant–an outlaw with a heart of gold.