The day after the Thanksgiving weekend I took off for my own private holiday, driving east on the 10 freeway past Riverside and San Bernardino, past the hills of Palm Springs to the dusty little town of Desert Hot Springs and the Sagewater Inn & Spa, where the doors are painted turquoise, the linens are European, you’re handed a pound of Gramma B’s coffee cake when you check in and aahhh, the mineral water flows into the Jacuzzi at 104 degrees. The last two years I’ve made reservations to come out here, after a recommendation from a friend, and have cancelled each time, either for financial or scheduling reasons. This time I was determined to get out here. I knew I’d need it after my usual bout of “holiday fever” over the Thanksgiving weekend. (We won’t go there for now.)

I brought three suitcases. The first had my clothes and toiletries. The second was really a plastic filing case, but I used it to tote all the food I’d need for three days, as each room has its own kitchenette. In the third suitcase was all my reading material: The New Yorker from two weeks ago with an article on Robert Hass & Mark Strand’s new books of poems, the Sunday L.A. Times crossword puzzle and Book Review (with an article on Bukowski), literary journals (FIELD, Willow Springs, Pool, The Ledge), my trusty Moleskine journal, a spiral notebook with notes from all my poetry workshops and, of course, a plethora of books: The Universal Myths by Alexander Eliot and Joseph Campbell (for an upcoming workshop with David St. John), Handbook of Poetic Forms, by Ron Padgett, The Situation of Poetry by Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass’  and Mark Strand’s new books, They Came to See a Poet: Selected Poems by Tadeusz Rozewicz, Hapax: Poems by A.E. Stallings and The Paper Rose (a new book of poems by my Vermont College professor, Tom Absher). Oh, a few more, but enough is enough.

It takes awhile to settle into not doing your routine. I’ve had the urge several times today to go into town and find a bookstore or a grocery store or go on some inane errand that will get me out of my room, away from the very thing I came here to do. Funny how that is. I do have to ease into it and I find two things very helpful: water and television. No, not at the same time—that could be dangerous. Taking baths, showers, dipping in the Jacuzzi, drinking lots of water (which is fantastic here), all these things get me relaxed and unwound from the city. TV, well, it’s a distraction and one that has to be carefully monitored or it could end up consuming inordinate amounts of precious reading and writing time. I find them (distractions) valuable as process time, beyond the very useful ones of sleeping, walking and meditating, which all fall under the healthy category, whereas blobbing out in front of the tube is purely indulgent and necessary in allowing myself freedom to simply enjoy without guilt.

I’ve been here a little over 24 hours and have another 40 or so to go before the two hour drive back home to L.A. I’ve gotten through a couple of journals, organized some poems for submissions, read that New Yorker article and gotten half-way through the crossword puzzle. Dinner is over, I’ve watched enough TV for the day, so it must be time for a soak in the hot tub, where, who knows, under those magnificent stars, inhaling the good, clean, dry air, any number of transcendent poems may arrive to fill up the rest of my evening. If not, I’m sure the faces of the books strewn across the white duvet will be vying for my attention to fill up a few minutes of these precious hours in the desert.

Pictures and a Desert poem by Tom Absher below. Also, if you are interested in any of the books or journals I mention, just roll over the title and click for a link to more info. 

Courtyard outside of my room. It’s been windy today, as you can see.

View of the mountains with the whirling windmills below.

Wood carving of a Chief at a nearby Museum

 
 There are 15-20 inns and spas in this area of Desert Hot Springs. They run the range of funky to sublime. This one is the former, but I do love the sign!

THE DESERT

Many people have walked
into one desert or another
to find their gods, like Arabia,
east of the Euphrates, an unholy
violence of heat, sand and those
salamanders which thrive
on fire from the sun, because
there is so little else to eat.

If one seeks to hear the voice
of a deity it might be found there,
where sky overwhelms the land,
where there is no sound
but the pulse of blood in the ear.

It has been said that divinity
does not speak in thunder clouds
or a whirlwind, or from the bottom
of a well, but in the presence
of animals, or the voice of a child,
ordinary, soft-spoken words, sounds,
musings, a question,
a voice so small one must go
into the desert to hear it,
to believe it.

I have heard it is a voice that addresses us every day
in one form or another,
but we never notice,
perhaps like the voice Abraham heard
before he set out for the Promised Land,
that place overrunning with milk and honey
and war, endless war—
words first heard so faintly
so close by, he might have thought
they were from the salamander
beneath his feet:

Return here often and listen for me.

Tom Absher
The Paper Rose
Plain View Press, Publishers
 

This is the longest hiatus from P.E. I’ve ever taken. I haven’t felt inspired, been feeling more inward and, honestly, kind of tired of hearing what I have to say. That happens. I have been writing poetry. They occasionally float quietly in through the window. Other times they stomp up on the porch and bang on the door. Most of the time they just sit down with me for a little chat, to let me know there’s something they want to say, something I need to get busy writing about or I’ll wither away. The desire to write poetry is something I treasure, something that means that no matter how bad the world out there gets, that poetry still wants to live, wants to give voice to the depth of human sorrow and the beauty of the human soul.

I’m back in L.A. for the time being. The summer was spent bouncing up to Oregon several times, over to New Mexico, up to Napa and back to L.A. in between all of those trips. There were times when I found it difficult to ground myself, to connect with where home was for me. Instead of seeing the divine order of my life, I felt split in two, caught between, not only my two places of residence, but between who I was and who I am becoming. I wasn’t sure where I belonged.

It was on the drive down from Oregon after my last trip that a peace settled over me. I drove the 900 miles with only my two dogs as companions. It takes fifteen hours and I split it up into a day and a half-day. It’s always tough on the body, these road trips, but there’s something so liberating, something that gets freed up inside when you move through the countryside, stop at little towns and wayside stations along the way. By the time I pulled up in front of our house in L.A. I was joyfully exhausted. There was a certain amount of triumph in having gone the distance, but more than that was that somewhere along Hwy 97 or I-5, a peace had arrived, an understanding about where my true home is, where I will always belong—a place that will never have a mailing address or a weather forecast. I can’t really explain it. Like a good poem, peace is a mysterious force, some of which can be told, but most of which reaches down inside you and opens you to an inner truth, to grace.

Here are some photos taken in Oregon and on my way driving south.

 The "old bridge" over Crooked River Gorge between Redmond & Madras, Oregon

The train bridge over the gorge. When I was in high school my friends and I would come out and play chicken. Scared me then. Scares me now.

Closer look at the train bridge. It’s an amazing piece of engineering and beautiful to behold. Same goes for that husband of mine!

 
Here’s me being artistic with the photography.

Gotta interject a "bridge" poem that I fell in love with by a Polish Poet, Leopold Staff.

THE BRIDGE

I didn’t believe,
Standing on the bank of a river
Which was wide and swift,
That I would cross that bridge
Plaited from thin, fragile reeds
Fastened with bast.
I walked delicately as a butterfly
And heavily as an elephant,
I walked surely as a dancer
And wavered like a blind man.
I didn’t believe that I would cross that bridge,
And now that I am standing on the other side,
I don’t believe I crossed it.

Leopold Staff
Post-War Polish Poetry

Grass Lake just south of Mount Shasta. One of the most stunning and peaceful places. 

The story of Grass Lake. Maybe if you get a magnifying glass out you can read what it says.

No, I haven’t been to Maine or Alaska, but I did just get back from a fantastic week of poetry in Napa Valley, where Show me a moose and Get wet were the two clarion calls that arose out of poems from our workshop led by David St. John. There are four groups of twelve that meet every morning, each guided by a Master Poet (Elizabeth Alexander, Jane Hirshfield, Stephen Dunn or David St. John). There is no set curriculum, with each Poet having the latitude to assign exercises and processes for the participants to produce a new poem every day and bring to the group for critique. I can’t speak for the other groups, but I was more than thrilled with quality of the participant poets in the group I was in and found the exercises David challenged us with, to be both fun and expansive. (See below for a sample.)

The conference hosts both fiction and poetry writers with craft talks and readings by each of the workshop leaders. It’s a long day, with lectures and workshops during the day and readings every evening. I had to find some time to recoup and to write my poem for the next day, so never did get to any of the fiction writer’s craft talks. The poets each gave great craft talks and I’ve included a couple of quotes from each below.

I have to give it to the administrative staff and all their support staff for running a seamless conference. Ann Evans, Nan Cohen & Willa Rabinovitch, the program directors, were always upbeat, supportive and efficient in taking care of the needs of both the instructors and the participants. Maybe I am just more relaxed, but it seemed to me that this year (I attended in 2005) the whole program was even more harmonious energetically and richer in valuable information on writing. Not to mention the food, (provided by Napa Valley Cooking School) which was super, super good—a light breakfast and delicious lunch every day, with an additional dinner on the first night with a final picnic on Thursday night. It was a culinary feast each day and you know how important it is to have great food when your brain is working overtime. As a vegetarian it can often be slim pickins at workshops and conferences, but these folks got it all right and provided an equal variety of tasty entrees and side dishes for the non-meat eater. 

As for my own process—I came away with a few good poems, but what is more exciting was the ease at which the poems showed up and how much fun they were to write. I don’t always get this—no writer does. But when it happens—WHOOPEE! You get on that pony and ride. I have to give big credit to the assignments that David handed out to us Sunday night. There were about ten of them and his instructions were to pick one every day as a guideline to write the next day’s poem—didn’t matter which exercise or which day. Some of the instructions were to write in a particular form (sonnet, rondelet, triolet), some were to use a particular process (the “martini” poem, dramatic monologue) and some you were to use a particular “evocation” to bring forth the poem (something “lost,” epistolary, or landscape/memory). I have to say, the results were both surprising and impressive, and got more so as the days progressed, not only in my own work, but very much so in how the whole group fed off the inspiration of each other and kept raising the bar, not in a competitive way, but in a supportive one. The caliber of the participants really blew me away, both in the quality of their work and the quality of their critiquing.

To wrap up (and get to the good part, the photos), the week was a success on multiple levels, in that I came away having learned a lot (still digesting), met some wonderful people and connected with others I’d met before, and I feel my poetry “toolkit” has been greatly enhanced. All of these combined to bolster my own work and propel me one inch further along the path of “poet.”

Landscape/Memory Poem Exercise:
Deliver us to a place you once lived, perhaps between the ages of 9 and 12 and describe it with meticulous physical detail. That’s section 1. Now, in section 2, confront the memory of an event or person from that place and time. Let us see the event of section 2 against the backdrop of section 1.

Quick Quotes from the Craft Talks:

Elizabeth Alexander:
Is the poem cleanly achieving its possibilities?
Consider the relationship of the breath to the iambic line.

Jane Hirshfield:
As children go to storybooks, adults go to poems to be rightfully frightened.
A window in a poem is where the poem breaks open—enlarges the view.
Insight is not gained by domestication.

David St. John:
A poem is a model of consciousness—an experience.
You can seize a language that belongs to you through writing poetry—bring the fullest sense of yourself.

Stephen Dunn:
Where the poem turns is where the poet makes their most significant discovery.
Grace is what occurs when technique has been loved for a long time and then forgotten.

 
Hilda & I flew into Sacramento and drove the back roads to St. Helena. This "luggage sculpture" is in the baggage claim at Terminal 2.

The first night’s reading was outside at the Napa Valley Community College, where the course was held.

 
A few of the participant poets in the David St. John workshop preparing for the morning. The tables were sprinkled with glue, paint and who-knows-what ground into them, making for a very "artsy" surface on which to muse and write.

Hilda & I in front of the fountains at the Rubicon Estate where the third day’s reading took place.

 Roy, our host at the Spanish Villa Inn where we stayed in St. Helena. Hospitality PLUS!

Hanging out on the lawn. Ann knitting, Nan in stripes, Jane Hirshfield standing at left.

Milling about before the food arrives at the picnic.

 Mickey (from Alabama), Greg & Joel finishing up their yummy meal with good conversation.

David and Greg working on their poems (or, maybe not).

Christina and Melissa, two of my roommates from Squaw Valley last year. 

First Books Panel: Austin Grossman (fiction), Indigo Moor (poetry) and Albert Flynn DeSilver (poetry). Indigo was in my workshop with Jane Hirshfield in 2005. You can check out (and buy) his book, Taproot, at Main Street Rag Publishing. 

Last day, eating our bagged lunches and saying Good-bye (David, Christina, Bonnie & Wendy) 

Wendy (from Virginia) and her partner, Gary (who was there for moral support and is a poet and professor and all-round nice guy.) 

Hilda & I bid Adieu to the Spanish Villa and a great week of poems! 

I wrote the piece below a few days ago when I was in New Mexico to renew body, mind and spirit at the Summer Solstice celebration in the Jemez Mountains. First my husband and I took a couple of days to ourselves, nestling down in a B&B in the Pecos Mtns. owned and run by a family who had carved a beautiful home and accommodations out of the side of a mountain. The father, aptly named "The Mountain Man" has a small tree farm and lives in his own cabin, while his daughter, Judy and her husband Steve live in the upstairs of the sturdy log and stone home they built just a few years ago. We stayed in the large suite downstairs with king bed and jacuzzi tub and breakfast served in the adjoining kitchen/dining/living room area. Our two days there were perfect for resting, doing nothing and going nowhere.

The following few days were spent on another mountain with fewer trees and many, many more people. We’ve been coming to Summer Solstice since 1972 and it has never failed to be transformative, starting every morning with the three a.m. wake-up, the call to stretch the body and mind, to awaken the soul to the field of infinite possibilities. During the day there are yoga classes, cruising the bazaar, children’s camp, karma yoga (chopping veggies, camp maintenance, serving food, the list is really endless), connecting with friends and making new ones and in the evening music at the Yogi Tea Cafe under one of the massive white canvas tents. It is always a timeless experience, a pause in the madness of every day life–an alternate paradigm where the spirit is the priority and each moment is a precious opportunity to open to what could be, how individually and collectively we have the power to live as compassionate, courageous and conscious beings.

Today, another mountain range, the Cascades, is where I reside–back in Oregon for a week–with a couple of days of family ahead, then days to dive into more revision and preparation of poems for going out there in the world. But more on that later. Here’s the piece from the PE-letter from Monday with a few photos of the journey. Peace.

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

The breeze is beginning to stir. It’s ten a.m. in the Pecos Mountains in northern New Mexico. Yesterday we rested, my husband and I, slept on and off all day, didn’t leave the premises. The pine and fir trees, the pond with trout, the wildflowers and blue sky were enough food for the soul. He watched golf on TV. I read Norman Dubie poetry and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. We both took long baths. I found myself inspired to reorganize my poems in my computer into those that were pretty much ready for submission and those that were still in need of some serious revision if they were to make the grade. It felt good to be ruthless about the readiness of the poems. I was determined not to cater to my attachment to any poem. To make it into the “Submission Ready” folder the poem had to meet a high standard of completion: rhythm, diction, form and meaning all had to mesh to make the poem sing. I was pleased to see that my standards have risen since I did a similar culling a few months ago. It has begun to mean more and more to me what the poem is aside from my sentiment or what I think it might convey. The poem must be an entity that is complete unto itself. It must have the ability to stand on its own two poetical feet.

We’re leaving here in a couple of hours. Everything back in the bags, back in the car and taking the drive through Santa Fe to Espanola and up into the hills to the 3HO Summer Solstice site where we’ll be there for a few days of yoga, meditation and connecting with our spiritual family of almost two thousand seekers. It will be hot and dry, the dust will blow, the skin will burn, thunderstorms will roll in and chanting will be heard echoing off the peaks and mesas. Just as the poems must be cut and amended, so it is time for a soul revision— a time of reflection and appraisal of the year past and the year to come and a look into the timelessness of the journey. I wish you all a blessed summer solstice and may all your revisions be clean and strong and may you always follow your bliss. It is the path to the center of your heart.

The Mountain Man 

The Pecos River 

Wild Irises 

A bucket of firewood.

The main trail through the Summer Solstice Camp. The yellow building is the kitchen, which is always jumping day and night! 

One of the yoga tents–looking out to the Jemez Mountains and Espanola Valley below. 

A little bluegrass music to end the day at the Yogi Tea Cafe.

I haven’t exactly gone underground, but I have been truckin’ a lot lately, thus the blog has not been attended to as regularly as I would like. On May 16^th I hopped in my ’93 Mercedes at 5:30 AM, swung by and picked up my friend Seva and off we went on a road trip—heading due north up the I-5. In no time (a little over six hours, actually) we cruised into San Francisco and being a little worn out from the early start we snacked and napped in our hotel room. I’ve always loved to visit San Francisco. The architecture and the vistas are incredible. It’s been years, probably ten or more, since I’ve been there and now that my son has taken up residence there, I imagine I’ll get there more often.

To put the rest of the trip into a mini-version here’s what happened: visited my son at the Presidio Native Plant Nursery where he is doing an internship for a year; had dinner (Thai food) with him and friends in the Haight-Ashbury district; the next morning ate breakfast at the Stanford Hotel on Nob Hill, lunch in Dunsmuir (just south of Mt. Shasta), where the sun was shining and the locals were quite colorful; decided to keep on driving to Sisters instead of stay the night in Dunsmuir; arrived at the house, after buying groceries, at about 6:30 pm; unpacked, ate some dinner and crashed in our respective beds.

f
It was a gorgeous, clear day in San Francisco. The view from our hotel window.

The next morning the notorious SF fog was doing battle with the rising sun.

The Native Plant walk at the Presidio, all in bloom.

Inside the large shed where the employees, interns and volunteers work.

Mother and son hamming for the camera.

It’s been a busy week, with the focus on fixing up my husband’s office/art studio area downstairs. It needs everything: paint, carpets, shelving, desk, art table and lighting and chairs. After a few days of cruising Bend and Sisters going to second-hand stores, hardware stores and paint stores we rented a big-ole truck for a day on Tuesday to pick up the various pieces we had decided on, with the last stop being the carpet remnant, which turned out to be six feet too long (12 feet total), thus leaving it hanging out of the truck bed. To keep it from flying out of the truck as we drove the 20 miles from Bend to Sisters, Seva sat on the end of it to weigh it down and off we went down Hwy 20. I only wish I had picture of that!

Spring is making its way slowly but surely up here in the high country. The creek in the meadow is full, the grass is already a foot high and the birds are everywhere–robins, Steller’s jays, nuthatches and woodpeckers—making nests and chattering up a storm in the early morning hours. The weather is never predictable this time of year, with temps ranging from the 30’s to the 80’s and rain, sometimes even snow, that can come out of nowhere to send you scuttling indoors for a jacket or to start up a fire in the woodstove. In our yard is great rock garden that I just love because it is so ungroomed and random. The rocks are all native (the former owners took them from the property) and there are wildflowers of all sorts that poke out of the nooks and crannies. I may just go get a couple of those wildflower seed packets at the nursery in town and throw them out there helter-skelter to see what comes up.

This second week I’m here by myself, still working on the house projects, but now having more time to devote to some writing and reading. Speaking of which, I just finished Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I totally enjoyed. I’m also reading a book I found at the local bookstore called, Writing to Change the World by Mary Pipher. This book I couldn’t pass up, for obvious reasons. I’m also a few pages into an oldie, but goodie, that I never read in my youth, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. I’ve also watched four movies this week on DVD: Sweet Home Alabama (one of Seva’s favorites), The Barbarian Invasions (my second time for this touching film), Les Choristes and A Love to Hide (both of these are French movies and excellent). As for poetry, I am reading poems by Tomaz Salamun, a new poet to me, from his book, The Four Questions of Melancholy. Powerful stuff and a style that seems to be a direction my own work is heading in.

Well, I think that about does it for catching up. I leave you with a poem by Tomaz Salumun and some more photos of the wildflowers amongst the rocks (and a local woodpecker lookin’ for some morsels).

THE TREE OF LIFE

I was born in a wheat field snapping my fingers.
A white chalk ran across the green backboard.
Dew made me lie on the ground.
I played with pearls.

I leaned fields against my ear, and meadows.
The stars were crackling.
Under a bridge I carved an inscription: I don’t know how to read.
They rinsed the factories with salt water.

Cherries were my soldiers.
I was throwing gloves into the thorn bushes.
We ate fish with the golden break knife.
In the chandelier above the table not all the candles were burning.

Mother played the piano.
I climbed on father’s shoulders.
I stepped on white mushrooms, watching the clouds of dust,
Touching branches from the room’s window.

Tomaz Salamun
 

Lupine with a touch of dew. 

  Looked this little guy up (yes, it’s a male) in my bird book. He’s a White-headed Woodpecker.

Green chilies, red chilies, tamales, sopapillas, guacamole! It’s New Mexico and the food is hot and tasty. Last week when I was in Espanola (a small town north of Santa Fe, south of Taos) I went to dinner with some friends at one of our favorites, Gabriel’s, out on Hwy 25, where they make the guacamole fresh to your specifications right at the table. The tortillas are freshly made too and the green chili knocks your socks off. Well, it’s not that hot, but it sure does get the tongue dancing.

Thought I’d look around for some “foodie” poems and found these three. Also took some snaps at Gabriel’s. Mmmm, is it time for dinner?

Entrance to Gabriel’s 

Twins that were too cute to resist not taking their picture. 

The busy dining room at dinner time.

Making the guacamole–so much color! 

Close up of the guacamole prep–love how that lime juice looks coming out of the press. 

Where are the mariachis who go under these hats? 

This was dessert–the desert at sunset. You can see some snow on the farthest peak. 

POPCORN

When Plato said
that what we see are shadows
flickering on a cave wall,
he must have meant
the movies.
You let a cigarette lean
from your mouth precisely
as Bogart did.
Because of this, reels later,
we say of our life
that it is B-grade;
that it opened and will close
in a dusty place
where things move always
in slow motion;
that what is real
is the popcorn
jammed between our teeth.

Linda Pastan
Carnival Evening
W.W. Norton & Co., Publishers

ODE TO FRENCH FRIES

What sizzles
in boiling
oil
is the world’s
pleasure:
French
fries
go
into the pan
like the morning swan’s
snowy feathers
and emerge
half golden from the olive’s
crackling amber. 

Garlic
lends them
its earthy aroma,
its spice,
its pollen that braved the reefs.
Then,
dressed
anew
in ivory suits, they fill our plates
with repeated abundance,
and the delicious simplicity of the soil. 

Pablo Neruda
Ode to Common Things
Bulfinch Press, Publisher 

RED ONION, CHERRIES, BOILING POTATOES, MILK– 

Here is a soul, accepting nothing.
Obstinate as a small child
refusing tapioca, peaches, toast. 

the cheeks are streaked, but dry.
the mouth is firmly closed in both directions. 

Ask, if you like,
if it is merely sulking, or holding out for better.
The soup grows cold in the question.
The ice cream pools in its dish.

Not this, is all it knows. Not this.
As certain cut flowers refuse to drink in the vase. 

And the heart, from its great distance, watches, helpless. 

Jane Hirshfield
Given Sugar, Given Salt
HarperCollins, Publishers

Here’s my two cents from the PE e-letter this week along with some added photos of a beautiful skyline in Central Oregon. It was one of those spring days up here when the weather went from sunny to snow to rain to hail and back to rain all in the space of an hour.

Whenever I arrive anywhere after traveling I am lost, not quite sure what to do. I have no rhythm established. Do I eat? Watch TV? Do laundry? Run outside and talk to the trees or people on the street? Unpacking helps to some extent—putting familiar things in unfamiliar surroundings—clothes arranged neatly in dresser drawers, shoes set by the door, coats and sweaters hung in the closet, computer plugged in, internet on, email checked, vitamins set out on a desk or countertop, toiletries lined up on the bathroom counter, my own down pillow thrown onto the bed with a wool shawl and my traveling stuffed bunny pal. These things all help “me” be in the room where my eyes and fingers can be in contact with them. I like to burn incense or spray a special “clearing” potion called Serenity Spray that has sage and lavender and other herbal essences in it, all of which uplift the energy and removes any bad vibes. I also bring a traveling altar with me, consisting of a couple of silk cloths, a seashell, a candle, a framed picture of my teacher or a guru and my book of prayers. When this is set up on a dresser top or nightstand then I truly feel at home wherever I am.

It does usually take a good 24-36 hours for me to “land” and I most often find myself regretting making the trip, immediately wanting to turn around and go home, even if I’m at my home in Sisters. Even though I’ve grown to know that this is what I’m going to go through each time, it still surprises me, catches me off guard and I’m spun out of my comfort zone into a sort of “outer limits” zone. It’s now been 48 hours since I arrived in Sisters and today I feel terrific. I’m perfectly content to be here, looking out the window, taking long walks, talking to friends on the phone back in L.A. I’ll go back on Saturday, as planned, but I wouldn’t go back earlier even if you paid me. I guess it’s a process of assimilation and like a dog who turns around three or four times before he plops down to sleep at night, we are creatures who must feel secure in our environments, allowing our senses to relax, our guard to be let down. We need to make a connection with the place and the creatures in that place.

I am one of the very blessed and fortunate ones in this world to have so many loving and supportive places to lay my head. Sometimes it just takes a bit of time to settle down and settle in to find myself never wanting to leave, until the moment that too turns and I am ready to go home or go forth, whichever way the compass is pointing, whatever the destination on my ticket reads.

I got home on Sunday night. It seemed that half the plane was L.A. poets. All in all the experience in Atlanta was a success–both informationally and inspirationally. The focus of the conference is to support teachers of literature, so I have to admit some of the panel discussions did waft over my head a bit, but I found something of value in everything I attended. I especially enjoyed the readings and on Saturday went to the University of Tampa one, where my mentor, Sarah Maclay, was one of six readers representing the UT Press and Tampa Review. There were also panels on "How Poems Begin" and "More Than One Way to Tell a Story."  The latter included Stephen Dunn as one of the speakers, a poet who’s work I very much enjoy. He has a great book out about poetry called, Walking Light: Essays and Memoirs, that is funny, poignant and inspiring writings about his life and his life with poetry.

Hilda and I finished up around 4:30 then headed out for an early dinner with a short walk around downtown Atlanta before the reading at eight with CD Wright and Coleman Barks. Barks read mostly his own poems, with a couple of Rumi’s in the mix. CD Wright read from her soon to be released book of poems, One Big Self: An Investigation. The poems are taken from a previous published art book where her poems accompanied photos by Deborah Luster taken in  three prisons in Louisiana. It was riveting stuff–powerful in the use of language and the woven emotional textures of the sorrow, resilency and brutality of the inmates, wardens and the reflections  of the writer herself.

I’m happy to be home now and happy I went. I met some great people and connected with some folks in the bookfair, publishers of journals I wasn’t familiar with and came home with a folder full of flyers, postcards and pamphlets to pour over. Not to mention the half-dozen books I picked up that I had to stuff in my already bulging suitcase. With all the stimulation I’m ready to pull out a stack of poems and match them up with some journals and send out those submissions. I got a good start today just printing out the poems, doing some quick revisions here and there and making a preliminary list of the journals. I plan on having ten submissions in the mail by the end of next week. Wish me luck. Below are the last photos from the conference and a couple of what I saw of Atlanta–not much, I’m afraid.

Coleman Barks & CD Wright before the reading. That’s Hilda right behind them and my empty chair. 

Sarah & Holaday hanging out before the reading. 

Stephen Dunn 

I’m digesting–a dinner of edamame and vegetable fried rice from the Pacific Rim Bistro–and the days events. It’s Saturday evening, with only one more event to go before the conference wraps up. There are readings tonight in fiction and poetry, with the poets being two southerners, Coleman Barks and C.D. Wright. But, let’s get back to yesterday. It started out a little more relaxed as I skipped over the first session of the day, finding nothing compelling to attend, thus having some time to putz about, eat a late breakfast and get over to the Hilton for the 10:30 panel on Narrative Poetry: Past, Present, Future with B.H. Fairchild, David Mason, Kate Daniels and David Rothman. It proved to be highly engaging and, unlike the day before, my eyes did not glaze over with mental overwhelm, rather I found their arguments and advocation for the narrative poem not only intelligently outlined, but passionately felt. What I came away with was the understanding that every poem tells some kind of story, even if it is simply random words on the page, the mind will seek to make associations, to create a story. It is what we do as humans–and that a poem that is purely narrative is not a poem. It must have lyricism, it must sing, to connect in the way a poem, by its very nature, is required to connect. Otherwise, it is reporting, dry and unimaginative and leaves the reader with no emotional reverberation.

At noon I went to the Graywolf Press reading, which was lively — and after listening to mainly poetry for the last two days, it was great to hear some fiction and essay pieces read. The room was packed and the energy high. I particularly enjoyed the essay read by Anders Monson from his book of essays, Neck Deep about technology; from the telegraph to high speed internet–really how we communicate and connect, what goes obsolete and what never changes. Really lively and funny and true.  

I took a cruise through the masive bookfair, stopping at various booths to pick up a flyer, a postcard, submission guidelines, a couple of chocolate kisses, small yellow buttons with the Chinese letters for Poetry on them from Copper Canyon Press, and of course bought enough books to weigh down a small donkey. It’s the proverbial candy store for someone like me, and I suspect a good majority of the poets and writers and teachers of both, who mill about touching the covers, flipping through the pages and making small talk, while they calculate in their heads how much $$ they can spend and how much weight they can pack into their suitcases to take home. (Books are HEAVY!)

There were great readings by Charles Wright and Terrance Hayes in the afternoon. I had read Wright and especially love his new volume, Scar Tissue. He writes poems that speak plainly but with deep eloquence about place, relationships and our relationship with our interior landscape. Terrance Hayes is a young man, one who was a college athlete (basketball player) and an artist and has landed as a poet who has a strong sense of musicality in his poems, humor, and telling his story, as a young black man growing up in the south, with sensitivity and deep felt awareness. I was very impressed with him as a poet and a thoughtful and emotionally whole man. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of my camera, or more likely the limitations of my knowledge of the camera, the photos I took didn’t turn out for this reading or the reading in the evening with Thomas Lux, Marilyn Hacker, Cornelius Eady and David Bottoms. And, very unfortunately, Dean Young wasn’t able to make it. He got stuck in an ice storm in Iowa. It was my first time hearing Eady & Bottoms, both of whom (as well as Hacker & Lux) were a delight to hear. It was an affirmation, with the incredible diversity in the work of these four prominent poets, that the form is always secondary to the hand and heart that craft the poem. Below is a poem by Cornelius Eady he read about his parents.

 Cornelius Eady (Photo by Howard Gotfryd)
 

I’m A Fool To Love You

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell you, if she could,
About her life with my father,
A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.
She would tell you about the choices
A young black woman faces.
Is falling in with some man
A deal with the devil
In blue terms, the tongue we use
When we don’t want nuance
To get in the way,
When we need to talk straight.
My mother chooses my father
After choosing a man
Who was, as we sing it,
Of no account.
This man made my father look good,
That’s how bad it was.
He made my father seem like an island
In the middle of a stormy sea,
He made my father look like a rock.
And is the blues the moment you realize
You exist in a stacked deck,
You look in a mirror at your young face,
The face my sister carries,
And you know it’s the only leverage
You’ve got.
Does this create a hurt that whispers
How you going to do?
Is the blues the moment
You shrug your shoulders
And agree, a girl without money
Is nothing, dust
To be pushed around by any old breeze.
Compared to this,
My father seems, briefly,
To be a fire escape.
This is the way the blues works
Its sorry wonders,
Makes trouble look like
A feather bed,
Makes the wrong man’s kisses
A healing.

From Autobiography of a Jukebox
Carnegie Mellon Poetry, Publishers 

I’ve only got a few minutes before I need to get going over to the conference for this second day of panels and readings and the bookfair that stretches into infinity. There’s a Poetry Extravaganza tonight with Thomas Lux, Dean Young, Cornelius Eddy, David Bottoms, Tree Swenson & Marilyn Hacker (filling in for Brigit Pegeen Kelley). But that’s later… Yesterday the weather was blustery and on the walk from the Sheraton to the Hilton it went from drizzle to downpour in one block, leaving me completely drenched, as my umbrella was almost torn from my hands by the wind. Nevertheless it was a great morning inside, where it was warm and comfortable.

I am sitting in on talks both about poetry and personal essay, crossing over into the latter territory is new for me, but because I’m looking to publish both it’s a good opportunity to poke my nose into what’s going on in that genre. There was even a panel discussion on poets who write nonfiction and the conflicting emotions that can arise from doing so. There was a really interesting panel on writing collaborative poems that was facilitated by Denise Duhamel (great poetry and great energy). Charles Harper Webb was also on this panel. He teaches at Cal State, Long Beach and I was in a workshop taught by him at Idylwild a couple of years ago–a great teacher and generous human being. By six pm, after a full day of sitting in those "seminar chairs," I was done for and headed back to the room to order Thai food and chill out with my roommate, Hilda, as we debriefed on our experiences of the day. It’s a lot for the brain to take in and, even though we missed the evening keynote address, we were both happy to eat some healthy food, take baths and get to bed early.

This morning the sun rose in brilliant colors and the sun is shining. Reading the paper I saw that there were tornadoes in parts of Georgia yesterday. Luckily, they bypassed Atlanta. There wasn’t a topic calling to me for the first session so I’m heading over around 10 to cruise the gigantic bookfair and then start at 10:30 with a panel on "Narrative Poetry." Before I go I’ve got to sit down and figure out a little bit more of what I’m doing with my new camera. One of the thrills of the day for me yesterday was figuring out how to operate the zoom. Today, I’ve got to get down the best way to take indoor shots. Some of the ones I took yesterday I had it on the right setting and some I didn’t. Technology strikes again! 

More tomorrow… 

Denise Duhamel on Collaborative Poetry.

Charles Harper Webb on the Collaborative Poem

Panel Discussion on "Getting to the Heart of Syntax."