The weather has perfectly expressed how we all feel about leaving: the heavens opened up and poured in a tremendous thunderstorm today, complete with pretty good sized balls of hail. I did get to sit in an Adirondack chair on the hill overlooking the field for three wonderful hours of sun and reading beforehand.
Today is light on events - only two talks and two readings. Fiction workshops met this morning, poetry and nonfiction ones ended yesterday. Michael Collier and Robert Cohen read after dinner, followed by the goodbye dance at the barn. Yes, there is a disco ball.
We are the walking dead. Many of us are sick because of the extreme weather shift from hot to very cold (for a week - you could see your breath at night) and now hot again. I personally heard some people tell stories of having coats and warm clothes Fed Exed to BL from home.
Last night we had the last reading in the barn, the theme of which was erotica. I will definitely arrange this at Creative Alliance or somewhere when I get home as it was absolutely killer - no holds barred. The last piece of the evening was called 'An Erotic History of Watergate.' As you can imagine, it was hilarious.
RADICAL REVISION
Now on to some tidbits from a craft class I took the other day from the poet, Catherine Barnett (I bought her book, by the way. For you poets out there - she is very good).
I'll just list ways you can accomplish this when you are working on a poem. Dig up some old ones and see what happens (it's best to use old ones to start, as you are no longer emotionally attached to them):
1) If someone tells you you have too much in your poem, add more.
2) If someone tells you you have too little in your poem, take out more.
3) Take the last line and make it the first. Rewrite from there, keeping whatever works in what's already there.
4) Expand your poem: add subordinate clauses using who, when, until, if, while, before, after, as, since, whenever, where, etc.
Also use coordinating conjunctions: and/and/and; or/or/or; but/but/but (think of it as a list that keeps going)
So, for example: "The man, who once loved me, who once told me___________, and __________, and ____________, and ______________..." so you're pushing the syntax and the comfort of the line/sentence.
Actual listing - must make a qualitative progression (light to dark, big to small, for example); can't be random. Push the list, see what you come up with.
Repetition - repeat what you just said. Maybe repeat it again.
Contradiction - say the opposite of what you just said.
5) Compress your poem:
Negation: use the word 'not.' When you do this you get both the thing named and its absence. You can also use other words that negate - 'un'; 'never'; 'less'; 'without.'
Neologisms: (what I like to refer to as kennings - used in Anglo Saxon poetry): put words together to create a heightened adjective, a metaphor: 'the shutmouth mother,' 'the sorrowfence.'
Possessives: use possessives: 'how the sun's poultice draws on my inflammation' (Plath) or 'the wind's rebuke' and 'the leaves' exhalation' (Brigit Pegeen Kelly).
Shift the parts of speech: Use a noun as a verb or vice versa. Use an adjective as a verg, etc.
Cut and paste: radically rearrange your poem. Find new combinations!
EXERCISE:
Go over your poem and underline any lines you feel jump out with lots of energy. Pick three of those lines. Make one the first line of a new poem, one a middle line, and one the last line. Now, using some of the above strategies (minimum 3), write a new poem.
Time for dinner. Another poet I want to mention before I forget, one of the fellows here, is Ilya Kaminsky. He is Russian, his book is Dancing in Odessa by Tupelo Press (which won a Whiting Award), and he is a wonder. Keep an eye on him. He will be big.
