It rained all night. No gale force winds or torrential downpours but it did rain on into the morning enough for us to pull out our umbrellas and raincoats. Didn’t stop us though. We arrived at Waterloo Village at 8:45 for the 9 a.m. poet conversations. Liza went to hear Tony Hoagland on the main stage and I decided to listen to Ko Un, a Korean poet who was born during the Japanese occupation of his country, lived through a wrenching war, was a Buddhist monk for ten years then a militant activist who was jailed for ten years, and is now married with a college-aged daughter. This morning he spoke of the rain as being our “guest” and how it was important to have rainy days in life, not always sunny, that it was good to struggle against the elements, how it built layers of resilence and character in the landscape.

Here is one of the poems he read (Ko Un read in Korean and the translation was read by Richard Silberg, co-editor of Poetry Flash):

The Poet

For a long time he was a poet.

Children

called him a poet and

women did too.

Surely he was a poet

more than anyone I knew.

Even the pigs and the boars

grunted him poet.

He died returning from a distant land.

In his hut there was not one word of poetry.

Was he a poet who didn’t write?

So a poet wrote a poem for him.

As soon as the poem was written,

the wind blew it away.

Then all the poems of the East and the West, old and new,

flew away, swish, swish,

every one followed suit.

*************

There is much more to say about this day but I will leave you with a few more pictures so I can, once again, get to bed and sleep well. Suffice it to say the days are filled with rich language and deeply expressed longings. There is vigorous conversation, tears of joy and sorrow and so much thought–contemplation on how words, language have the power to transform the human spirit–for better or for worse. This sacred trust is one the poet takes on as part of the mantle. It is no small thing and requires questioning and a willingness to forge into territory where one can err and come back to the page again and again to put thoughts on the page.

Linda Hogan and Gerald Stern

Billy Collins

Ekiwah Adler-Belendez (19 y.o. disabled in body–inspiring in his poetry and courage)

Brian Turner, an Iraqi vet who wrote about his experience of war

Main Stage Tent–After the sun came out

Becca (from Chicago) and me lookin’ good!

One of the buildings at Waterloo Village

There is beauty everywhere you look here

The geese who eat anything they can find (including candy wrappers)

The port-a-poddy. An essential (but not pleasant) part of the experience