Yesterday, at the Ruskin Art Club here in L.A., I took an all day workshop with David St. John, a USC professor of poetry and well-known local poet. I had heard so many great things about his workshops from my fellow poets in the last couple of years, but this was the first time I actually made it to a workshop. The title was Lyric Inspiration in Contemporary American Poetry: Cinema, Fragmentation and Erasure. The content of the session was far more accessible than the title. David gave us a general overview of how the cinema and pop culture has affected literature and poetry in particular, especially in the times following the first and second world wars. Poets like Frank O’Hara, Larry Levis, Norman Dubie and John Ashbery. He also talked about how the fragmentation of the culture, the move away from an agrarian society to an industrial one particularly was a catalyst for poets to speak more personally, to seek connection and community through their writing and to speak as the “I” and represent the “we.” T.S. Eliot’s, The Wasteland, was one of the first poems of this kind.

Somehow I missed getting the email with instructions for the day, so neither brought a well-known poem to illustrate the cinematic influence, nor did I bring a poem of my own to be workshopped in the afternoon. No loss though, the day was thoroughly enjoyable. There were several friends of mine in attendance and David has an ease of manner and an openness that makes everyone feel uplifted and relaxed sharing their thoughts and their poems (which were all quite good). Because I was having such a good time I completely forgot to take a picture—which can often be a bit awkward in these small groups, anyway. I’m definitely getting on the email list to get notice of David’s workshops in the future. Besides, I have a one-poem credit to get critiqued for the next one—kinda like a gift card for $20 from Best Buy or Trader Joe’s, but infinitely more delicious!

One of the several Larry Levis poems read in the morning session:

    Photograph: Migrant Worker, Parlier, California, 1967

    I’m going to put Johnny Dominguez right here
    In front of you on this page so that
    You won’t mistake him for something else,
    An idea, for example, of how oppressed
    He was, rising with his pan of Thompson Seedless
    Grapes, from a row of vines. The band
    On his white straw hat darkened by sweat, is,
    He would remind you, just a hatband.
    His hatband. He would remind you of that.
    As for the other use, this unforeseen
    Labor you have subjected him to, the little
    Snacks & white wine of the openings he must
    Bear witness to, he would remind you
    That he was not put on this earth
    To be an example of something else,
    Johnny Dominguez, he would hasten to
    Remind you, in his chaste way of saying things,
    Is not to be used as an example of anything
    At all, not even, he would add after
    A second or so, that greatest of all
    Impossibilities, that unfinishable agenda
    Of the stars, that fact, Johnny Dominguez.

    Larry Levis