writing camp 7/13 during which I start to cut class

7/13...another 6:49 am wakeup...at least the water pressure in the shower is better than my shower at home...another long walk & re-read the day's manuscripts after a very sad breakfast indeed - what's with all that melon & no bagels again?...and why won't it rain? please? no notes during workshop but this is what I have from the first seminar/panel 2:00 pm POET AS LOVER, READER AS THE BELOVED: Building a Unique Relationship The reader and the writer, the lover and the beloved. These are versions of the same thing: two alien minds trying to share a world. How do poets woo their love-objects (their readers) into an imaginary, often radically unfamiliar, universe, shack, or pup-tent? Is it true, as May Sarton says, that “all poems are love poems”? Panel with Nick Flynn, Matthea Harvey, and D. A. Powell" [Matthea wasn't on the panel]...my notes: what is the urge to write? "all poems are lovers" (unattributed) "a way to access the unconscious - not necessarily a dialogue with the reader" - Nick Flynn..."all poems are dramatic monologues" D.A. Powell..."a profound silence' - Virgil" "spontaneous emotion recollected in tranquility' - Wordsworth"..."the real love poem is the one that goes starkly into the problem of living, the problem of loving" (D.A. Powell)..."writing to the younger self" "writing from the crisis of the present"..."who is the hermetic poet writing for? Dickinson? Stevens?" "the poem has to please the poem" (Powell)..."all poems are kind of a controlled failure" (Powell)..."Orpheus & Erydice...just on the verge of closing the gap between ourselves & the unknown...the moment of the mistake - therein lies poetry"..."Zeno's paradox - we get ever closer with each successive poem but don't actually want to get there..."..."the same as faith...Michaelangelo's Creation - Adam's finger never touches God - what makes life/poetry interesting is that you have to go on faith" (Powell)..."love is doing - Tilly Olson" (Flynn)..."Penelope weaving & unweaving...Scherezade - talking against death"..."it's done, there's no fixing it/may as well write about it" (Powell)..."We can change the past by what we do today" (Flynn)..."writing from a place of compassion...trying to be empathetic"..."Dean Young - all of the real writing of the poem happens before you put pen to paper"..."poems are operas not arias - every piece contains a part of the whole"..."the moment of bewilderment in a poem is somewhat equivalent to the lyric moment" (Flynn)..."dramatic vs. interior monologue - Dickinson more interior"..."I encourage the baser emotions in my class - bitterness, mean-spiritedness" (Flynn)..."too often when we think of love, we think of this pure thing - love is riddled with the baser emotions" (Alex)..."reading love poems to learn about love is like watching porn to learn how to have sex" (Flynn)...after which I took a long walk, read some, listened to some music had a beer & entirely blew off the next seminar...3:00 pm THE EXQUISITE TEXT: How to Learn from the Success of Others Seminar with Antonya Nelson...I'm sure lots of exciting things happened between 3pm and the 8 p.m. Reading with D. A. Powell, Ann Cummins, Antonya Nelson but I didn't take notes so who knows? I stayed for D.A. Powell's reading which brought me to tears (as always & just shut up you non-lovers of good poetry) and then I went to the bookstore & bought some Neruda & went to read and have a beer by myself because I just couldn't take any more listening to other people talk...ended up in a good conversation about poetry & the frustrations of reading translated work & then headed off to catch up on the "outside world"...