finding an identity

It hasn't been easy getting back here, with all kinds of email account problems.

After the mfa residency, I've been curious about my own reaction to being there.  First, I was a student, but I felt more of a connection with the several faculty I knew than with the other students.  That feeling was peculiar, and I'm still working on it.  I do understand it because I was a faculty member for 43 years, and it has been 46 years since I was officially a student.  I was fumbling for an identity in the mfa program, and I managed to find one by the time the residency ended.

The kindest move, the one that eventually helped me the most, was a little acknowledgement from Craig Lesley, who taught at PSU during my last several years there.  The residency had been going on for a couple of days, and he came up to me during one of the moments before one of the faculty readings when everyone was milling around, and said very quietly, "I've heard people say they're glad you're here."  That doesn't sound like much, but it really resonated with me, like an echo in a big cave.

Another thing that helped were my two "suite mates," Frank and Fred, men "of a similar generation," as an mfa administrator named us.

Now on to the second packet.  I'm reading Robin Robertson's Swithering, Mary Jo Bang's The Eye Like a Strange Balloon, and Lucie Brock-Broido's The Master Letters--all three comprise a big challenge, each for a different reason.  The first has lots of Scots dialect, the second is totally ekphrastic, and the third is just, to me, obscure.  But it's my list, and like Popeye says, "You've buttered your bread,  now lie in it."

After a 10-day pause

OK, so I haven't written here since June 25th, but I've written 5 poems, read three books, written three reading commentaries, along with a substantial cover letter.  So there.  I just finished the cover letter, so I declare myself Independent of the first packet until I send it off to Kwame by email on July 9th.

In preparing to work on the next packet, I've been reading Christian Wiman's book of essays, Ambition and Survival:  Becoming a Poet, and I'm disappointed.  I thought I'd find something instructive; after all, he edits Poetry, and I expected this collection to be something like Louise Gluck (excuse the lack of umlaut) or William Stafford in saying how they came to poetry and giving a sense of vocation.  But I don't find it in Wiman.

After Wiman, the next three books on my list of twenty are Robin Robertson, Swithering; Mary Jo Bang, The Eye Like a Strange Balloon; and Lucie Brock-Broido, The Master Letters.  I'll see what I can do with them.

After this, I'm taking the day off.

The day after

I don't think I wrote anything yesterday; I was busy packing and getting home.  I drove a young violin repair man to a youth hostel in Northwest Portland, and just as I let him off, I remembered that I left my black leather, zippered shave kit beside the sink in 304 Burlingham Hall, Pacific University.  It has my shaving mug, razor, brush, beard trimmer, fingernail clippers, little scissors, toothbrush, shampoo, and God knows what else in it.  I emailed one of the staff members at the U. and asked her for help.  Much later in the day I received a really terse note:  "I'll look for it and let you know."  I have heard nothing. Gulp.  Maybe I'll have to go totally shaggy and unkempt for the foreseeable future.  I'm ready to drive back out there and get it if the staff people find it.  I'm not drumming up much hope so far.

I've found my way into the three books I have to read, and I've got three drafts of poems so far.   I see the books connecting up, so the reviews shouldn't be too hard to write, but I really need to get on with making poems.  All for a while, I expect.

The party's over

The last poetry craft talk was this morning, and was it ever a beauty.  Ellen Bass talked about the difference between Sentiment and Sentimentality and how we need to risk sentimentality and achieve sentiment.  The graduation and the banquet are now over.  Frank, one of my two suite mates, has already left for Portland.  So the residency is finished.  I only need to pack the car and drive back to Portland, leaving a young man who repairs violins in Santa Fe at a youth hostel in Northwest Portland just a few blocks from my son's apartment.  When I get back, I'll need to upload my residency review file on Moodle, and I'll be totally clear and ready to look to the next two weeks for 5 poems, three book reviews of books I haven't read, and a significant cover letter.  Yow!

I'm tired, and I need to finish packing tonight, including the computer on which I have written this blog.

What's next?

I've almost made it through boot camp.  Home tomorrow.  Whew!  I have yet to format my 12 residency reviews of craft talks, panels, and classes, but I have a free hour and a half this afternoon before the graduation ceremony and reception, so that'll be the time to do it.  Still, I'm half sad about the 10 days being just about over.

This residency has been a good experience, and I think it's just the right length.  If it were another 5 days beyond today,  I don't think I'd make it.  I think probably that's true for a number of the faculty.  I don't think it's true for Marvin Bell, who I expect to go on forever.  He sits at lunch with other faculty and students and tells story after story--and laughs and laughs.  Isn't that fine?

Time for me to make a move.  I want to shower and scamble, get decent, and have eggs for breakfast.

Fallen behind (surprise?)

I've fallen behind.  My responsibility, after being in craft lectures, panels, and classes is to write up a page or so of a residency review, so that I have at least 12 by the end of the week and submit them within a week of the end of the residency to the MFA office.  By writing drafts of two last night, I now have nine.  The techniques of presentation in craft lectures range from traditional argument with demonstrations of proof in particular poems on handouts, to collages and illustration on large screens.  Sometimes they're just not so easy to capture in words, which are supposed to be my special medium.  (Outside my window, I see a long line of football players heading north to the gym for a training session.  The weather is cloudy and cool, and they're progressing slowly.)  But I occasionally get distracted by other things.

Workshops were finished yesterday, so the rhythm of the week has changed; classes, craft talks, and readings remain for our last regular full day.  Tomorrow there are things like graduating student readings, and the graduation ceremony and reception, along with a buffet dinner outside.

Yesterday, I met with Kwame Dawes, my advisor, who set up 5 deadlines for sending him the cover letters, book reviews, poems, and revisions that will constitute the main part of the correspondence semester, which lasts from the time I get home Sunday till November 19.  So yesterday, I got a full picture:  a cover letter, 5 poems, and three reviews of books I haven't yet read are due on July 6.  Hmm.  The big salmon feed on Anderson Island is July 7, and we'll be there.  It's also Mary's birthday.

Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage gave a craft lecture yesterday.  As he was standing there by himself and looking uncomfortable, I approached him and told him how Lesley, our daughter, enjoyed his PBS program when she was very small a long time ago.  He was pleased, more than just pleased; his whole body reacted.

My morning alarm just went off.  I must go.  More later.

Advisor for the semester and evening readings

Tonight everyone found out who their advisor will be for the semester, and there was big excitement.  Mine will be Kwame Dawes, the new editor of the Prairie Schooner.  I think he'll be tough but straight. That'll be okay with me.  One young man who didn't put Kwame on his list will still have him for an advisor, and he is sorely disappointed.  I tried to tell him it will be okay, but he wouldn't be consoled.  I think he's talking himself into a corner he might not be able to get out of--complaining loudly and a lot. He came here from Florida to study.  He's very young.  I hope he gets his head on straight, or he'll have a miserable time.

At the reading Marvin Bell was great, as always, and Elinor Langer read part of her book in progress on the last queen of Hawaii and the story of the US colonizing it.  The story, as far as she read, was chilling.

There was a panel this morning in which one guy said something I think is really important.  "Touch the work every day.  Either you're a writer or you're not.  If you come home drunk, touch the writing or get a zero for the day.  And if you're a good Catholic, you know that you got a zero it will be there for eternity and nothing can make up for it."

Short entry tonight partly because I already did one earlier today.

Solstice

It's the solstice, and after fatigue grabbed me hard yesterday and I napped late in the afternoon, I feel refreshed this morning.

Two nights ago there was some action I slept through.  I remember vaguely hearing a siren, but it was midnight, and I was nearly asleep.  MFA students on the fourth floor and facing the street saw it all and told me there were seven police cars in the street right in front of the dorm, with sirens and lights flashing.  They had guns drawn and one of them said "Drop that purse!"  But it wasn't a purse that was stolen, it was a car, and the police arrested the perp.  And I missed it all.  More important that I should have a good night's sleep.

The workshop has finished critiquing poems, but we have two days to go as yet.  Kwame had us draw postcards from a stack he had and buy a new book of poems to bring to Thursday's workshop session.  Dorianne didn't say what she's going to have us do today.  At the student reading last night, I read two poems.  Everybody gets applause for everything at the student reading, except finding the rest room,  so they were well received.  But really, several of the students I know complimented me, and that felt especially good.  It's odd never to know quite where I stand with the poems I write, especially when the workshop leader sees possibilities I haven't thought of and flaws I've missed.  Since poems use so few words, compared with prose, it's really important to be "one on whom nothing is lost," I think that's something Henry James said once, or maybe more than once.

Today the faculty has a big meeting about student-advisor pairings, and tomorrow we all find out the advisor we'll work with between the end of the residency and the end of the semester.  Big anticipation.

I must begin my day.

More than just another day

It's cloudy and cool outside, and the crows are noising big time.  I smell rain, and that will be just fine, as long as I get out to my car and retrieve my raincoat from the trunk first.  I slept hard last night, except for the usual trips to the bathroom.

I'm beginning to feel a little fatigue in my knees in the morning, but every day so far has been exhilarating.  I missed the first few minutes of a session on technology a couple of days ago, and when I got there, the instructions were coming at the speed of light and no handouts were given, and the technology is necessary for using Moodle, some kind of digital application for downloading and uploading files with MFA templates and my required writing.  So the administrative assistant for the MFA program will give me a tutorial at at 5 this PM.

Dorianne's craft lecture yesterday was a surprise.  She has found a constant in all the poets she has looked at, and she calls it the poetry of identity.  It's a poem from a poet's childhood in which the poet identifies himself as in the world, separate from the world, witnessing the world, and then writing about the world.  In a way, she claims it as a "universal," my term. So she advises all the poetry students to get in a quiet place and remember the earliest time possible when they saw themselves in the world, yet separate from an event that was going on.  So I tried it, and by god, it's so.  I have a clear and vivid memory--don't laugh--of my Uncle Glen throwing up in the petunias in front of grandma's house in Havensville, Kansas.  I can't have been more than 4 years old, but those flowers, my grandma's Paul Scarlett rose growing at the end of the porch, me standing on the sidewalk and him in the grass, waving me away and me not going but watching him bent over above the petunias as if he's intently looking for something.  I'm working on the poem with that narrative.

At the big people reading last night, one poet read a poem implicitly praising fathers, and another poet read a poem that demonstrated how far separate she is for hers and how little he understands her.  She said she promised her father she'd read a poem for him.  Hmmm.

I went to the student reading last night at 9.  The people in this residency are wonderfully friendly and supportive.  I don't know why that surprises me, but it does.  More later

Bloomsday

Today is Bloomsday, the day James Joyce's Ulysses is said to have taken place in Dublin, 1908.  Even though that's his great novel, no one talked (but me) about it, even the 27 writers at the residency.  That's odd.

I missed yesterday.  It was warm and I got molto tired.  It was a very good day, starting with an amazing craft lecture from Michael Meyer, who used a large screen and a digital projector of some kind that worked from his Mac.  When the technology failed him for a second or two, he giggled and said, "I'm a language arts teacher for K-12, and when this happens an 8-year old always says 'Let me fix it!  I can fix it!"  and they do."  He gave a fabulous talk about starting with "place" in travel writing, then expanded it to just about any kind of prose writing.  It's like he offered an analytic skeleton key to the audience.  We already have the tool kit to work with--character, scene, setting (place), etc., but we haven't recognized that that's what to start with.  "Always start with place" was his mantra, and he used the big screen to demonstrate the truth of what he said in a dozen different authors, most of them well known.  Then finally, he didn't quite have time to show us all of what he wanted to, the special demonstration from Steinbeck's East of Eden, but he had the relevant words already underlined in a handout he gave us.  It was fabulous.  He was funny and smart and spoke FAST.

Then the workshop was good, too.  There were a couple of poems I just didn't get, and now I do, so I learned.  People in the workshop were generally pleased about most of my poem but offered two serious changes.

The afternoon craft lecture was a little frail, a woman talking about Haibun, a combination prose-haiku form.  The notion of the form was clear, but, though I was awake and alert, I didn't think she had a lot to offer.

The Director of the program sat down beside me before the afternoon talk to check in and see if I was okay--looking after the old guy, I guess.  Her assistant, a young woman, had been behaving as if I were totally frail.  I'm not, am I?

The other two guys in my suite bought me dinner at Stecchino's last night, fettucini Alfredo, but it wasn't as good as my wife makes.

There was a reading by 3 of the 27 writers at the residency, and after that a reading by the students at 9 PM.  I was tired and I came back to the dorm, a good thing I did.  I slept wonderfully well last night.  Today is Fathers Day, and I celebrate my wife and my two children.  They support me more in my new adventure than anyone could believe.  More later.

A Busy Day

Last night, I sat out on the campus after the BBQ with five men and one woman, while they drank beer and talked about fiction.  I drank cranberry juice (good for the prostate, you know).Three of the men were named Andrew and the one woman was named Heaven (child of Hippies).  I sat downwind of one of the Andrews while he smoked, so combined with what must have been grass pollen, the tobacco smoke gave me hay fever.  Then, this morning, it was announced that there should be no "open containers" outside of the dormitories.  I had abetted a misdemeanor.

After I had my tea and a yogurt, I went to the Multi-Purpose Room for welcome and the first lecture (It's 365 steps away from my dorm hallway; I've walked it several times today).  Marvin Bell, who for a long time taught in the University of Iowa Writers Workshop (daddy of American MFA programs), gave a brilliant, thickly textured talk about poetry.  I'm supposed to write a review of what he said.  Good luck with that.  I did manage notes, but I'll have to try to reconstruct them tonight.   At 11:30. I went to an orientation meeting.  I went to lunch and things were fine.  I had rice, chicken, and asparagus (!), and since kitchen is so spartan, I decided to trade lunch for dinner today.  For dinner, I'll have a blueberry yogurt smoothie and scrambled eggs.

After lunch, someone interviewed a novelist named Claire Davis about revising fiction and opening up possibilities in your own work.  I'll bet she can swear like a sailor, almost did more than once.  Then another novelist talked about Idiosyncratic Narrative Omniscience in Recent American Fiction (notice that I capitalized those previous words; it was that kind of  a talk.  I experienced a clear loss of connection.  I was tired, and it wasn't interesting.

Then we were instructed in the use of Moodle, which has taken the place of Blackboard.  It's a way of submitting our work--the portion of our work the administration will allow to be submitted that way--on line.
It's now 5:01.  At 7:30, there's a reading by a novelist and two poets.  I expect I'll be done in by the end of that time, but I'll still get two of my "residency reviews" written up.

I'm going into google to see how Tiger did in the Masters today.  More la

So I'm here.  It's 3:30 on Thursday, and life is quiet.  I had an awful time getting my computer to work. It still had an administrative password and wouldn't let me go anywhere.  The resident tekkie made the necessary changes, and, as you reading this can see, it's working for me.  I accidentally left the lemon bars in a plastic ziplock bag in the car in the sun, and they melted, but other than that, everything's okay.  I'm on the third storey of Burlingham Hall in a small, small bedroom, probably 8 feet wide, but it'll do for 10 days.  Everybody has been very helpful.  An intern named Kelly Chastain (a name I vaguely remember from somewhere) helped me carry up all my stuff, then I went off to get a student ID photo--it turned out the way those photos always do.  I need to sign off now and check the schedule.  I don't want to miss the trip to the grocery store this PM.

Packing

Soap, shaving kit, beard trimmer, frying pan, olive oil, and, oh yes, clothes, and computer and printer and paper and on and on.  As I pack to go to Pacific U. for my first of five residencies, I didn't expect my heart to be beating faster today, but it is.  Tomorrow will be my first time in about  fifty-five years to set myself up in a dormitory, in effect rooming with three other guys for ten days.  It's a short time, really, but I discovered that I needed my stuff, my amenities, my mini-immersion tool for mixing and my olive oil for cooking eggs at breakfast time.  My wife and son went together and bought two new frying pans for me, a gift for Fathers Day and a little personal support for my time at Pacific U.  I think it was the description of the kitchen that I received in the mail from the MFA program that moved them to action.  That description said the kitchen had "1 pot and 1 pan."

My wife had my 10-year old VW Jetta with a hundred thirty-four thousand miles on it detailed yesterday, another Fathers Day gift, and today it's beautiful.  I enjoy my car, a really dependable one that followed on after another Jetta I had for fifteen years and about a hundred sixty thousand miles before the current one.

I'm full of anticipation, wondering what my dorm suite, and those three other guys, will be like, wondering what the tone of the residency will be like.  Shelley Washburn, the Director of the program, is certainly congenial and informative.  And I'm still stunned at the faculty power that the residency will expose me to--about 35 faculty for the week.  This will be intense; still, I expect to enjoy it all.  Even in graduate school,  I wasn't in a situation like this--so many workshops, craft lectures, readings, and classes in so few days.  I want to absorb it all, and I'm optimistic about the way it and the advisor, whoever he or she will be, will get me on a good footing for making better poems and better revisions. More later.

Anticipation ii

I've read and studied the schedule draft for the 10-day residency, and it looks powerful--ten days of workshops, craft lectures, classes, panels, and readings from at least 35 faculty.  That's a lot of exposure to a lot of faculty power.  If anything is gonna boost my creative brain waves, this should.

I've corresponded with a student who's starting her thesis semester, and she has been helpful, even about the kitchen, which must be pretty spartan.  In the description the MFA folk sent about living circumstances for those ten days, the notes on the kitchen include "one pot and one pan."  My student correspondent says she didn't cook that much because she wanted as many chances as possible to socialize.  I plan to have eggs and tea for breakfasts, and at least one night, I'll make fettucini Alfredo.  That still leaves about a week of evening meals.  It sounds like an amazing adventure, an exhilarating one that will ask me to use a lot of stamina.   I've been thinking a lot about what to pack, but that's something for another blog.  Good night, all.

Anticipation

I'm three days away from going to a student dormitory to live for 10 days, with three other men "of a similar generation," according to the information I was given.  That means, to me, past 70.  I've done the first assignment:  I've read carefully and commented thoughtfully on 28 poems from students who will be in my workshop group for 2 hours a day for six days