I flew back to L.A. on Monday. Liza and I drove from New Jersey to Boston on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t stay until the end. It was rainy and chilly and Liza was feelin’ a bit under the weather. We had a lot to talk about on the drive through the quickly turning autumn leaves–Tony Hoagland’s morning talk on the craft of poetry was fresh in my mind, as was the early session of reading Rumi and Hafiz with Robert Bly and Coleman Barks. I sat up front for both of these presentations and even though I was shivering (my thin California blood), enjoyed every minute of the two very different experiences. Bly and Barks have a trio of musicians with a cello, flute, and drums to accompany them and they trade off reading poems or stories of their own, of Rumi or Hafiz or Mirabai. Bly likes to throw in his own little comments as he’s reading the pieces and the spirit is very high as the wisdom of the mystical Sufi poets fills the giant tent. I’ll share a couple of photos with you of the two of them (apologies for the fuzziness), plus one of Tony Hoagland.

Tony Hoagland on Sunday

Robert Bly

Bly & Coleman Barks reading Rumi, Hafiz & Mirabai

I always enjoy the mixture of the spiritual and humor that the Sufi poets bring to their poetry. They encompass the ecstatic, the tragic and the comic.

Backing up to Saturday–it was my longest day at the festival. I started at 9:30 with panel of Ekiwah Adler-Belendez, Kurtis Lamkin and Brian Turner with the subject of “Going Public with Private Feelings.” All three of these men are so very different in their backgrounds, subject matter and style. Ekiwah (his name means courage) is 19 years old and has cerebral palsy, Kurtis Lamkin is an African American poet from New York City who performs his poetry playing a stringed instrument called the kora and Brian Turner, who is a veteran of the Iraq war and wrote his first book of poems, Here Bullet, during the time he was in Iraq. After their talk I cruised the Border’s bookstore tent and picked up way too many books to list here.

Kurtis Lamkin playing his kora while Ekiwah reads a poem

Liza, Becca and I took our lunches into the main tent where we waited for the feature poets to read from 12 to 3. We all enjoyed the reading of Andrew Motion, the poet laureate of England, who read a fantastic poem about the passing of his mother when he was a young child and one about his father who passed away not long ago. I don’t have any good pictures of him but you can go to his web site at andrewmotion.com. There was also a very powerful reading by a Bangaldesh woman poet, Taslima Nasreen, who has been exiled from her country for speaking out for the rights of women. Lucille Clifton wound up the afternoon with grace and style. Becca and I dashed off right after the readings for a panel discussion on “Finding Poetry’s Inner Music, Saying the Unsayable” with Toi Derricotte, Jori Graham, Tony Hoagland and Linda Pastan. Becca had been following Jorie Graham around since the first day, fascinated with how she approached the art of poetry and I was getting my first taste of her. I found her to be insightful and incredibly intelligent. She also spoke of connecting with spirit and seeking a higher source as a participant in her writing.

The crowd under the big tent.

Lucille Clifton

Tony Hoagland, Toi Derricotte, Linda Pasten, Jorie Graham

It’s only 6:30 pacific time right now but my body is still thinkin’ east coast so it’s getting late and I’m yawning and my mind cloud over. There are still a few more pictures and thoughts to share with you but I’ll get to it tomorrow or the next day. I haven’t begun to really digest all of what went in over those four days and how it will affect my writing and reading of poetry in the future. Here’s one last photo I took on Sunday at Waterloo Village.