Residencies
Every semester in the MFA program begins with a 10-day residency at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon (summer), or at the Oregon coast (winter).
Residencies feature readings, workshops, panels and lectures by award-winning authors of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Residencies are scheduled twice a year in June and January.
The next residency will be held in Seaside, Oregon, from January 7-17.
What Students Are Saying
- "This residency was not about meeting my expectations; it was about setting goals
and then, when I least expected it, blowing them apart. For me this was an amazing process
and I am grateful."
- "I felt honored to be among such talent. I felt even more honored to have been
selected as a student in the program after witnessing the talent of our students during
the reading on Wednesday night."
- "The workshops made me reconsider my own craft and my eagerness to offer my opinions
of another writer's work…I allowed myself to dig into the content and matter more thoroughly
and discovered more possibilities for diversity in my own work."
- "Being here has brought back the thirst for literary writing, a thirst for writing
that is carefully crafted in content and structure."
- "This residency was both intellectually and spiritually gratifying, and also mentally and physically exhausting. But the exhaustion is almost like a war badge, a sign that I have completed and started an honorable path: a path of creation, discovery, and community."
Student Commentaries On Residency Craft Talks
By Rick Attig (Fiction, 2011)
Presenter: David St. John
Title: American Hybrid: Poetry and the Next Wave
While much of St. John’s craft talk centered on the anthology, American Hybrid, the most interesting and illuminating parts of his lecture were about the history of 20th century art, about what he called “a period of fragmentation.” This art that comes from “wreckage,” from a collision of perspectives, helped me better understand not only the evolution of art, from Cezanne to Eliot and Pound, but also to look with fresh eyes and perspective at my own writing, and about telling stories through more points of view, a multiplicity of voices and colliding perspectives. I liked very much his line that a poem is not a “leaf pressed between pages of anthologies,” but rather is a piece of living human consciousness. And I also appreciated another comment, that a poem “is not about an experience – it is a piece of experience.” That line is a powerful reminder for me to get closer, closer, closer to my stories, rather than stand back, at some distance, and write about “an experience.” Finally, I had never heard the description that “prose proceeds,” and “verse reverses,” turning back into itself. That again is useful writing advice, this idea of moving ever forward, proceeding.
Presenter: Pete Fromm
Title: They're Not Characters. Hello? They're People.
This was a painful craft talk: I spent the entire hour shifting in my chair, wanting to flee back to my room, grab my story and start cutting away the flabby backstory, the info “dumps,” the unnecessary exposition, that Fromm so powerfully described and dismissed during his lecture. I won’t soon forget his pungent advice: “You don’t inhabit shit by telling me about it.” I will take some of his other advice, too, doing some more writing in first person, and present tense, even if it’s not considered cool, even if it’s seen as an easy-out, just to get closer in to my stories, to get more real, to cut out all the explanation and throat clearing that I can now see more clearly in my own work. His complaint that too many stories open with the first sentence or two of a scene, then “fall” into backstory also cuts close to the bone. I vowed when I finally got back to my room and picked up my story that I would be more patient next time, would not rush to fill in the backstory details, would let the readers of my stories find the answers to their questions in time, rather than rush to give them everything I think they need to know, right now, too soon. This was a terrific craft talk, one that I will remember the next time I sit down to write, and I hope, every time after that.
By Jan Bottiglieri (Poetry, 2011)
Presenter: Pam Houston
Title: All That Glitters
The small moments that catch in our consciousness –the phrases, objects, and juxtapositions that leave an emotional residue – the resonant memories to which our minds repeatedly return. Pam Houston calls these “glimmers.” As writers, she says, our job is to collect them.
The first step, Pam tells us, is to Pay Strict Attention. “Don’t let things be lost on you,” she warns, urging us to notice, and to catalog, the moments that jump out as somehow “writing worthy.” The world is made of physical things: objects, conversations, sights and smells. By collecting those that seem particularly compelling, we can build a library of images and impressions that bring our work vitality. As Pam says, “We’re all trying to do the same thing: represent the world as we experience it, catch what it feels like to be alive in a certain way.”
The next step is to string our glimmers along in the “right” order. Of course, glimmers don’t arrive with a clearly-marked “Tab A” and “Slot B,” ready to be assembled into a finished piece of great writing. It’s probably for the best that they don’t. According to Pam, doing the assembly mindfully – intentionally – kills the power of the resonant moment. Instead, she urges us to let our intuitive sides prevail, to let the “magical, associative thing” happen.
Though Pam’s talk was directed toward fiction writing, these ideas address what I feel is poetry’s most important challenge: to infuse each poem with layers of meaning while inviting readers into a shared experience. In my own mind, I’ve always thought of it as alchemy: a constant quest to combine the right amount of the right common elements in the precise order necessary to produce something pure and shining.
At the heart of the process is the power of associative meaning. Logical assembly leads only to logical association, I think – writing that is expected, dull, and offers nothing new to either the reader or writer. We must work to let our unconscious minds determine the order in which we string our glimmers; in a sense, almost letting them choose the order themselves. The result: writing that contains deeper feeling, larger meaning, and truer detail.
By Sydney Frey (Nonfiction, 2011)
Presenter: Jaimee Wriston Colbert
Title: Loving the Unlovable
Jaimee Wristin Colbert started her talk with Flannery O’Conner’s great quote, “sentimentality is the pornography of the soul,” and with that we were off on our exploration of the unlovable. Their fall from grace makes things interesting, and we do ourselves and our readers a disservice by skirting around the depths of that fall or the humanity that remains despite it.
She clarifies: creating or exposing difficult characters is not the same as being “edgy,” as edgy writing tends to have no real tension or resolution. Difficult characters force us to layer complexity into our work, to create some understanding even if we’re horrified at our characters’ actions. Avoid the temptation to save them: “real redemption is rare.”
Jaimee used a wonderful example from her days teaching the incarcerated. She noticed an otherwise unlikable student in maximum-security prison take particular care with a jacket. He didn’t know he was being watched, and in that moment, Jaimee caught a glimpse of something that opened up his character for her, made him more than two-dimensional. We understand the difference between the deed – the bad deed – and the character.
By Jessica Henkle (Fiction, 2010)
Presenter: Debra Gwartney
Title: Argument Against Researching Memoir
Debra opened with a quote by Vivian Gornick. In reference to memoir, Gornick said, “We’re in the presence of a mind puzzling its way out of its own shadows.” Lovely and critically important. The reader—of not just memoir, but all stories—has to be convinced the narrator is figuring something out. A story is the narrator’s internal struggle—his own mind and no one else’s. Memoir’s job—and again, every story’s job, I think—is not to answer the question but to deepen the question. Debra cautioned against going on “fact-finding missions” during the initial drafts. Otherwise, the thin line between you and your memories will be cut. Human beings only store memories of value, and these memories inform who we are. We must ask ourselves why we remember things a certain way, which could also be an excellent tool for a character sketch. Debra also reminded us that tension is different than suspense. As writers, we must constantly be asking ourselves, what’s at stake? I am continually amazed at how applicable the talks from outside my genre are to fiction writing. Debra’s talk only deepened my conviction that the genres can learn so much from each other. In closing, she told us if you know the answers when you start the story, you’re writing the wrong thing. As everyone seemed to be saying this time, you have to let the story tell you what it’s about.
By Dennis Ginoza (Fiction, 2011)
Presenter: David St. John
Title: American Hybrid: Poetry and the Next Wave
At the end of David St. John’s talk, I found myself with more questions than answers— a sure sign that he had revealed aspects of poetry I had been wholly unaware of. His discussion of Raw vs. Cooked poetry was truly insightful. Most excitingly for me, when David read examples of “American Hybrid” poems, I was suddenly struck by the idea that the codification of a poem onto paper is now obsolete. On the page, a poem becomes definitive, immutable, unchanging, dead. But with evolving technologies that don’t rely on static media (paper, ink) will the nature of poetry also evolve into a new “hybrid”? Can there emerge a poetic form that is living, one that evolves and reacts to changing times? Like a blog, could this new hybrid be a poem that is never complete, one that not only grows in length but also has previous elements change as it reacts to differing circumstances? Does the existence of a poem in a dynamic medium therefore change the nature of the poem itself? And could such a hybrid model apply to narrative forms? These questions, among many others, were seeded by David’s provocative craft talk. As a fiction writer, this sort of cross-pollination of ideas is the real strength of the residency.
By Nomi Morris (Nonfiction, 2010)
Presenters: Marvin Bell & Joseph Millar
Title: What We Have Learned About Poetry by Writing It
This was my first exposure to Marvin Bell, and now I am among the unwashed ranks who believe him to be touched by the gods. Bell began by listing things he has learned through his writing life: 1) You can’t see into the future. 2) Know meter and iambics. 3) Standards and definitions are narrow and subjective. 4) Poetry is more of a dance than a song. 5) Talk about poetry is not poetry. 6) Accident and luck count more than knowledge and will. 7) It is a way of life, not a career. 8) Publication is the auction of the soul. (Try to keep your ego out of the submission and rejection process) 9) The writing is thrilling, the rest lasts for a few minutes and then you move on. 10) The objects of our desire are finite, but our desires are infinite.
Joe Millar seconded what is essentially a “live it, breathe it” credo for writing poetry. Millar said he has learned you can write it: “Just write down something on the face of the deep.” Much like Bell’s “dailies” exercise, Millar believes writing something, anything, is what will lead to good writing. Millar believes in humbling yourself, just as Neil Young remarked to him: “You can’t make demands of a new song.” This back and forth with Bell culminated in both agreeing that you have to write bad work to write good work. The alternative is to remain mediocre.
Bell believes in imagination. He says poetry has lost its audience to song (and I was thinking that trend is much the same as how books have lost their audience to film).
The session was inspiring because it cut to the core of the creative process, no matter what one’s genre. It also re-ignited my interest in poetry, which I haven’t paid attention to in years. And, together with hearing Dorianne Laux’s reading later that evening, it made me think that poetry is actually closer to nonfiction writing than fiction writing. The stream of consciousness style in which both Bell and Millar speak (and write) felt to me like poetry is to narrative prose as jazz is to classical music.
By Kitty Belsey (Poetry, 2010)
Presenter: David St. John
Title: Poetry and Aperture
There is a moment when the surface of a poem opens up, yields to access, and creates an aperture through which a reader can enter. Like Salome’s dance of the seven veils, what is withheld is slowly revealed. This is similar to the veil in ancient Israel’s temple, behind which God is hidden in the holy of holies. In Christ’s death, the veil is rent and God becomes available to the faithful. This metaphor of revelation becomes a metaphor for epiphany—the revelation of Christ. Seeing something ordinary and having a sudden flare of revelation means for the reader a sudden recognition of experience.
An aperture in a camera controls how much light is let through to the image plane. The aperture in a poem is not always a neat, safe opening but is sometimes raw-edged, like a wound. In the course of a poem, wounds are revealed that create a space for the reader to gain admittance. The emotional impact of these wounds comes from the reader’s recognizing we are sentient beings. The wound serves as a point of enlightenment for the reader, a revelation so profound it obscures nominal reality. It may come at a moment when the tone shifts and the poet makes a statement that turns the gaze of the poem toward the reader and invites the reader into the experience. The reader is looking for discovery beyond ordinary pat observations such as “That tore me up,” or “I always knew it would be like this.” A poem tries to help readers understand their own complexity. Poetry offers a possibility of connection. We operate in language, and we aim for acts of consciousness and sensibility in the music of language.
Citing the poetry of Rumi, St. John describes how Rumi, using an image of torn robes, allows access for the reader into the political world. As the lens turns, there is always a new wisdom. In the poem, there is a physicality; a hole in the wall becomes a portal to history. In good poems, aperture widens the scope of the experience. Examples abound. Poems by Bishop, Joe Millar, Marilyn Nelson, and more demonstrate strategies for preparing the reader for resolution. Every writer should admit it: the moment when a reader’s eyes widen—this is the focus of all the light we pour through the shutter openings in our work.
By Johnnie May (Poetry, 2010)
Presenter: Stephen Kuusisto
Title: Literary Writing and the Art of Listening
This was not really a lecture, but rather a brilliantly lush and lyrical meditation on listening. Stephen began with a quote from Stravinsky: “Hearing has no merit; ducks hear also.” Then, the question was posed—What advantage does the cochlea have? The answer? We can hear big sounds, but not from a great distance. A precise distribution of duration and rhythm can be heard by humans, but not by ducks! So Stravinsky was wrong. As writers, we cannot think that the senses have no merit even though the visual image has been predominant.
Stephen went on to provide many anecdotes on his own advanced hearing, developed at an early age due to his blindness, and suggested that listening is the art of leverage; that is, of influence. Stephen urged us to “stand still and hear the light” and said that he could even hear cherries falling when he sat in a field at the farm of a friend in New Hampshire. He compared his ears to “dried goldenrods listening to the hum of gnats.” He then stated that the ear’s par tensa was quicker than all the membranes of the brain and that it is the “wild auditory language of the brain itself.”
Stephen also talked about listening to music, especially to Paganini and Caruso. He quoted Cocteau’s statement that “’all good music resembles something’” and said that the chance music of what happens around us is lost if we fail to listen in this post-modern world. As for poetry, he affirmed that poetry is the art of analogy, and simile is the stuff of poetry. We always describe sound by comparing it to something else. He urged writers to use the multiplicity of our senses in our writing in order to convey the complexity of our conscious minds to readers. Also, he stated that literary writing is not just creating a “news photo”—a la Hemingway, but all the senses must be used—not simply the visual image.
To illustrate his point about using simile, Stephen played for us a hundred-year-old opera aria recording with Caruso singing in high C, staying there, and then slowly backing out. Afterwards, he described what we heard as “milk and iodine,” which he later explained as two substances that do not go together. His last piece of advice was to spend more time listening.
I have by no means done justice to Stephen’s wonderful meditation on listening—I can only say that his talk was beautiful and important for writers to hear so that we may begin to hear more deeply and fully.
By J. Chris Flanagan (Fiction, 2010)
Presenter: Jack Driscoll
Title: First Do No Harm
Jack Driscoll opened the January 2009 Pacific MFA Residency by reminding us of what it means to write, saying, "Speak what it feels to be human." He read a poem entitled "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson, and asked us to consider how the poem's final line—Went home and put a bullet through his head—undermines the entire characterization of Cory up to that moment in the poem. Jack mentioned that the term "persona," from the Greek tradition, is akin to "a mask," and as writers we must seek the truth in our characters, however surprising, the kind of revelations that make them at once empathetic and real as "people" as opposed to just "characters." Jack went on to add that under-imagined characters eliminate the reader entirely, spelling doom for any work of fiction.
As a practical matter, Jack suggested writers consider what he called "The 3 Ms" – Motivation; Motion; and (in a bit of etymological sleight of hand), Emotion. Motivation, according to Jack, is a matter of desire. He suggested getting characters in trouble and waiting to see how they behave. He then offered a terrific reading of excerpts from Brady Udall's short story "Midnight Raid" in order to illustrate his point. And then Jack hit-home the importance of motion and emotion by reading the opening of Pete Fromm's short story "Attack." The story begins at full throttle; it leaves the reader wondering where it could possibly go. The answer is a surprising one: the story jettisons its external conflict for a largely internal one, a rising action found in the consequences of the story's inciting event.
This last point of Jack's particularly resonated with my current thinking on the structure of the short story, that it is compelled to begin on the precipice of change and in the middle of significant action. It was a point driven home to me during a recent conversation I had with the American short story writer Charles D'Ambrosio. He asked me to consider Freitag's Triangle, the age-old representation of story structure and rising action. "Why not start at the top?" Charlie said. "Then, you will have nowhere left to go except even higher."
By Ryan Adams (Poetry, 2010)
Presenter: Kim Barnes
Title: Art and Absence of Reflection in Personal Nonfiction
At last, someone sees the connection between poetry and the personal essay. “If you just write, ‘this happened, then this happened,’” Kim said, “no one is interested, there’s no art.” She might as well be talking about poetry. “Even though what you are writing is your story, it’s not about you.” Again, she might as well be talking about poetry. She explained that it’s the emotions that drive the personal essay, and not plot. There’s no tension in the plot because we know the author doesn’t die. We know the author is going to make it. We know the “what” in a story, but we don’t know the “why.” So the essay must have reflection. But this is all true for poetry. There is no tension in a poem’s narrative. There just isn’t enough time for it. The tension resides in the emotions. We speak of the poem’s rhythm, its music, but these are all names for the same thing: emotion. And not just any emotion – your emotion. And not just your emotion, but the kind of emotion that is within the reader, the emotion that is in everyone, the kind that is human. “You must be a citizen of the world,” Kim said, “and not merely of your own life.” That is a description of poetry.
By Devika Brandt (Poetry, 2010)
Presenter: Mark Spragg
Title: Editing for Balance
What an inspiration Mark Spragg is! The two points he made that I will carry with me are: Stop caring about being a writer, and begin to care about the work as a reader; and the John Gardner idea of the work of the writer being to suspend the reader in the novel’s narrative dream. Both of these points feel crucial to me.
Mark encouraged consistency in the actions of a character, that they must act within the boundaries of who they really are, or else the reader will lose faith in those people and henceforth in the book. He encouraged us to allow the reader to discover the characters in their own unfolding, to share in his or her awakening. Part of this is editing out unnecessary reporting and finding out how little you truly need to say. This has been an issue in my own writing, along with trying to sum things up at the end. Mark said that summation usually confuses a story unless it is grounded in physical reality. When it is grounded, readers will trust enough to go wherever you take them.
Mark also spoke about rhythm in writing, which is another area I am working on. He suggested mumbling the words aloud just to hear the sound of them without the sense. “If it doesn’t sing to me, it owns no voice.” I am excited to try this, and to consider all the ways of editing as techniques that will allow the writing to “transcend that process so that the reader thinks that it was the easiest thing in the world.”
Mark Spragg humbly offered such generous and substantial ideas and inspiration. He made me eager to write with the idea that we are all in this together, and he has to work just as hard as anyone else. He is a human being with the intention of presenting words in their most evocative forms. He most certainly encouraged me to do the same.
By Nancy Hechinger (Poetry, 2009)
Title: The NEW New York School: The Children of Frank O'Hara
This craft talk was like recess, like lunch, like a story hour—full of energy, the best time of the day. Dorianne opened by inviting us to “take into our hearts some antic joy.” First she gave a short overview of the New New York School, and the poets influenced by Frank O'Hara, (who included Ashberry, Koch, R.D. Skilling, James Tate, Tony Hoagland, Charles Simic) and then she just read to us. “I love reading him. I love being in Frank’s voice.” No one wrote like this before. She read Personism, a fantastic wild ride of a silly rant with a serious message—but you never get a"‘here-comes- the-message" message. It’s like a train coming at you, all conversation. It begins with silliness and moves to deep seriousness. Look at the poem "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island." O'Hara begins with something absurd and moves to something serious. The sun grows in stature and believability as an authority figure. But without the silliness, the seriousness would not hold; it would be too much. It would be heavy, didactic. The main thing with Dorianne is this: She loves poetry so much, she whoops, she flies—she loves to read it, swim in it, and the energy of O’Hara’s work jazzes her no end…and passion like that is 100% contagious. Her parting words: “Don’t take yourself too seriously and live as variously as possible.”
By Cathryn Braeback (Poetry, 2010)
Title: Nocturnes and Aubades
Poet Sandra Alcosser urged her auditors to ask themselves, “What is my hymn to the night?” She described night as the time we are alone, when the soul comes out. I find myself considering how close this remark is to Edward Hirsch’s simple suggestion (in How to Read a Poem) for relating fully to a poem: read it alone, at night or in the early morning. Accompanied by a nocturne by Impressionist composer Claude Debussy and paintings by Monet and Whistler, Sandra firmly fixed the poetry of night to the late 19th and early 20th centuries in a recognized place in Western tradition. She also took this tradition back in time to the Orphic hymns of the Greeks. Sandra’s talk emphasized the universality of the aubade, the dawn poem of lovers, and the nocturne. Aubades were written by female court poets of 10th century Japan like Sei Shonagan and Ono no Komachi, as well as by the troubadours of 12th century France. I was struck by this reminder that the lyric tradition did not start with the Romantics and wonder how I, with a background in the medieval lyric, can incorporate some echoes of other times and places into my work. Poets and fiction writers still produce celebrations of night or morning, as contemporary poet Jenny Lewis has done, or turn the tradition upside down in the manner of Philip Larkin. I was startled to find two examples in Sylvia Plath’s Ariel the day of the craft talk.
By Aaron Kier (Fiction, 2010)
Title: Writing Mom
After Ellen Bass gave her talk about discovery, everyone buzzed about it for days. Faculty reiterated points in workshop, Craft Talks, over lunch; we chatted about it, looked at our work (and our lives and budding pieces of inspiration) through this new lens to see how the kaleidoscope’s colors might alter our perceptions, each chink’s shift a new possibility. But not until John Rember finally took the podium on Tuesday afternoon did we see this concept at work in the hands of a gifted craftsman.
Laced throughout John’s talk, lines rose to the surface and, without apparent intention, underscored Ellen’s concept. Saying, “The writer goes into the underworld without dying,” he cautioned: “You can’t do it by approaching stories you already know the ending to.” His comments and the poignant literary illustrations about mothers—drawn from sources as divergent as Hansel & Gretel to Persephone and Hades—drew broad strokes across the canvas. Metaphor and concepts, such as “the psychosis of normalcy” and a view of medical clinics as metaphor for the psyche, darkened the shadows. And in the center of this masterpiece he placed the glaring, hard-to-look-at portrait of his own relationship with his aging mother.
John may have opened his talk by lobbing to the listener the idea of writing as either expiation or witnessing, but his talk defied being neatly categorized under either heading. “Writers should learn to love messiness,” he told us. And he stood in the middle of that messiness, wallowed in it without concern that he did so in front of an audience. He laid out the difficult story of his mother’s deteriorating condition and his own anger, frustration and fear—not because he’s transcended those feelings and can place them in some neat little box and offer it up as proof of his atonement, but because he is still clawing his way through to the underworld in an effort to discover what it is he is meant to learn from this experience. In so doing, he posed provocative questions and thoughts. “What’s so bad about grief anyway?” “Nobody believes in nothing.” In reference to Hansel & Gretel bearing a theme of hunger and want: “Where does it come from in the midst of plenty?” And ultimately, his truly transcendent viewpoint of motherhood as a variation of Stockholm Syndrome—that the mother’s life, dreams, independence, identity, etc. have been “hijacked by her child.”
Wild stuff. I’ll be processing for some time. And hopefully, embarking on an illuminating journey of my own as a result.
By Robbie Pock (Fiction, 2010)
Title: The Secret of Once
So you’re writing along and the narrative is just getting soggy and slow and you’d give three stars off a Kirkus review just to find the one thing that would save you. If you had Mary Helen Stefaniak on speed dial, she could gift you the secret of once. A little mini-scene can rescue the plot, lighten the narrative, take the characters in a fresh, provocative direction. Like every other writer in the audience, I listened to Mary Helen’s lecture with an enlightened smile. Now I had a tool I could use to slip in a little backstory, drop in that brilliant detail to foreshadow a climactic moment. Since that lecture, I heard over and over again the students in the program saying, “You need to use the secret of once.” “You could drop a mini-scene here.” How wonderful when a teacher can show you something you’ve been doing all along and teach you how to use it to maximum effect. Thank you, Mary Helen.
By Helen Gerhardt (Poetry, 2010)
Title: Poetry A to Z
Marvin Bell delivered a high energy talk on, well, everything in poetry, from A to Z. My head was filled with cold medicine, so I was already a little dizzy, and Marvin came in with this talk that ran like a 100 meter dash on steroids. Mostly, I couldn’t keep up with him. However, I did manage to capture a few bits of truly wonderful treasure as he raced past me. Good thing for me he is generous with what he knows, and keeps it in all in big, loose pockets that tend to allow things to spill out.As he traveled through the alphabet, one of his E’s (and there were more than one) was for Elegies. Marvin asked, “Who are they for?” He continued with the answer, saying, “An elegy is a poem that was written too late.” He asserted, “In place of elegies, write more love poems!” This one got my attention, despite the antihistamine cloud surrounding my thinking. An elegy is a poem that was written too late. I had become aware that almost half of my recently completed poems were to people who were dead. Not that there’s anything wrong with writing to dead people, per se. It’s just a little lonely, because it is difficult for them to respond in a satisfying manner. It might also be a little cowardly, because the dead folk can’t answer you in an unsatisfying manner, either. At least, this has been my experience. I have begun to realize that I might be missing some of the very interesting and alive people who are currently part of my life, which is what Marvin was trying to point out, I think.
Let me make a promise based on a lot of what Marvin had to say: Marvin Bell, on my honor I will try to do my duty to God and my country and write more love poems, but I reserve the right to do this badly. I will mess with lines. I will give a damn. I will read my poetry with disregard for its meaning. I will not be myself. I will not write what I know. I will trust my senses. I will write love poems while the ones I love are alive. I will give it a try. I will fear no meter. I will remember that music arises within the body of the writer and the music always wins. Even scientists have their imperfect name for something that is as big as it can get, and they call it “the end of greatness.” I will write about that dark matter, that scientific sticky stuff of the universe, and I will do it with great love, and I will do it badly, to the best of my ability, again and again. You told me so. I promise. And thank you.
By Abby Murray (Poetry, 2009)
Title: The Ground Beneath Their Feet
Molly opened the topic of locating your writing, of landscape descriptions and how to handle them in a society spoiled by media. She essentially reminded us we’re not writing for the 18th or 19th century public—a patient crowd that absorbed lengthy, luxurious landscape descriptions because it was still new, still fresh and unseen. Then, it was the writer’s job to bring the land to the reader. Today, we write for readers who have (typically) seen fields, meadows and forests. They’ve heard the crawl of traffic in busy cities, and are no longer as patient as their ancestors with drawn-out landscape descriptions. For example, novels like those of Jane Austen’s were able to go in-depth on the “exterior” part of a story: where the characters were located, during which season, witnessing what kind of agricultural development, etc. Instead, readers today enjoy books more focused on the “interior” aspects of a story: what is happening in the minds and relationships of the characters.
But we can (and should) still realize the importance of landscape. In her handout, Molly cited examples from novels with authors as contemporary as Ann Patchett and Kent Haruf, highlighting their ability to make location clear and distinct, able to express not only a place, but also mood and metaphorical meaning. As a poet, I was glad to have been there. This craft talk elaborated on Ellen’s Discovery lecture and the significance of locating a poem. Molly gave us so many different perspectives to learn from -- one example being John Gardner’s quote: “The rain must be real for readers to understand the girl’s anger at her umbrella being stolen.” This made me want to take another look at my poems and see if I could tell what the weather was like in each of them! Was the emotion of each of my poems supported by what was physically there? Is each poem grounded somewhere?
During the talk, I looked over at my friend Adrianna, a fiction writer working on a “cross-genre” fantasy novel. Molly addressed that type of writing as well, telling us that if you’re making up your own world, you must address the landscape and “how” of it: How does it rain? How do plants and food grow? Where is waste kept? Non-fiction writers, I felt, had a place there too. “Where we come from informs where we go,” Molly said. We were all advised to remember the landscapes of our homes, our childhoods. Make maps. Examine the plant life. Then put it in writing and use it as the foundation of an entire piece.
By Catherine Michaud (Poetry, 2009)
Title: Fundamentals of Nonfiction
By Laura Hirschfield (Poetry, 2009)
Title: The Writer and the Republic
Lyric |
Bardic |
Individual, personal |
Collective, societal |
Inner |
Outer |
Private |
Public |
Figurative |
Stripped |
Obtuse |
Plain |
Examples: Mallarme Rimbaud Finnegan’s Wake |
Examples: Brecht Neruda (during and after war) Milosz |
By John Allen (Fiction, 2008)
Title: Enkidu Died, Gilgamesh Cried: Love and Grief as the Writer’s Best Friends
We need the shock of the new and the shock of recognition. Shock of the new: shows how new things can be, shows the vastness and creative potential of the universe. The shock of recognition: shows what has been forgotten, what was shipwrecked. The writer’s job is to unbury that which has been so carefully buried. A story will never achieve the power you want it to have unless you cut most of it. Ego takes the form of the narrative voice, makes the underworld accessible—and as you ascend from the depths, your mind is expanded. It is better to write as a whole person than as a half person. But becoming a whole person is hard in our culture. We don’t know what an authentic man or an authentic woman is anymore. When you write and rewrite a story, you get a sense of what it wants to become. We need to develop and experience deep and worshipful grief.
By Linda Weiford (Nonfiction, 2009)
Title: Improvisation – Prose, Poetry & Jazz
This was a highlight of my residency experience. The class had a beatnik feel to it. The only thing missing was my black turtleneck. Listening to Bell spew lines of poetry off the top of his head as Moore played the string bass was stirring, impressive. It taught me about reading and writing with rhythm. And what a delight to watch students read as Moore played his 300-year-old string instrument. When Moore plucked the strings with his fingers, it sounded like spiders scurrying up a metal rain gutter. The student readings took on a new sound, one of exploration and truth-or-dare. Meanwhile, Bell sat on a table behind the podium, swaying to the music. Had he been 30 pounds heavier, he could have been Jerry Garcia.
During class, I read the closest thing to poetry I’ve ever produced, “On-air Stripper.” It actually felt good to break out of the tight confinements of journalism. I really had fun.
Bell is right: “Poetry is much more than heightened speech.”