From the Writing Workshops:
1.) These notes on the board in David Baker’s classroom:
- Poems inform other poems
- Don’t be afraid of being clear
- It’s not enough to have one good idea. To make a poem, you have to have two.
2.) Here are two ideas: double americano. (The morning comes early at a writing workshop)
3.) This outside my window in Gambier yesterday morning:
4.) The readings by the Peter Taylor Fellows: dreamy good. There was elderly love, elephants, elegy, invisibility, iambs, and coffeeshops. Basically, the archetypes.
5.) Lee Martin told me at dinner of this program at Ohio State for Young Writers. I’m reminded that someone reading a book is a sign of order in the world. So is a person trying to write a book. So are the people who direct and fund this program.
6.) Nancy Zafris’ and Geeta Kothari’s class watched a film yesterday as a point of view study that included Orson Welles narration. His voice! With a voice like that, could he have any other point of view besides omniscience? Somewhere in the sky is the all-seeing eye, and that’s where Welles’ voice comes from. I look at clouds differently today.
7.) Had a long conversation at a reception about the folly of collegiate mascots. But isn’t this just another way to say metonymy? Or magical reasoning? I keep a book from an especially good summer with me; the book signifies what was luminous. It is something small that represents the whole. So: a mascot? If a poem is something small that represents the breadth of our lived experience….
8.) Found in the photocopier: A Katherine Anne Porter short story. A four page bibliography of form and prosody. Wrecked staples.
9.) Can you imagine James Wright wandering around Gambier? Something about this week makes we want to try to see him here. On that bench. Under the big maple. I want to find a horse nearby, just off campus, with a long ear that is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist…