I will be here and I promise better photo when I return.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
The Apostle Islands off of Lake Superior are the closest thing Minnesota has to the sea. It is where I will be for the next three days. I was supposed to leave yesterday but I have a horrible sore throat. Okay this may not be the best time to sleep in the woods but I need to go. So picture me here. I will be surrounded by water and sun. A four hour car ride is the closest I could get to salt. You dont understand if you think this is easy.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
she is just dancing.....
Last night was stunning. I went out for a wonderful dinner and then went dancing till 2 am. What is about gay men which makes them the most wonderful dancers? I know this is stereotypical and so not politically correct but I was dancing with three beautiful young gay boys last night (yes all at the same time) and I have tell you, my body can move in ways with gay men that it cannot with straight men. I don’t have to worry about it though I did find the only straight man in the place who wanted to take me home. Andrew promptly took care of him. So the night was filled with pink drinks, a short black skirt and yes darling glitter. I have sparkly boys to compete with I need glitter.
I am packing up today to leave town. I am going to an island. I am going to sit by the water by myself. My cell phone is broken so I don’t even need to take that. I will just sit and be alone because this is the week I need to. Tomorrow was everything and I must grieve it in my own way. It does seem, right now my way might include dancing and drinking but here comes the quiet.
I am packing up today to leave town. I am going to an island. I am going to sit by the water by myself. My cell phone is broken so I don’t even need to take that. I will just sit and be alone because this is the week I need to. Tomorrow was everything and I must grieve it in my own way. It does seem, right now my way might include dancing and drinking but here comes the quiet.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
If you are in Minnesota the State Arts Board is giving 2 to 6,000 dollar grants to writers this year for Arts Initiative. The deadline is September 15th. Here is the only money Mr. Reesce ever received for help writing A Clerk’s Tale. These grants are fairly easy to get and I think people should apply.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
I will be there
I am posting a letter I got a few weeks ago from the head of Palm Beach (sorry it took so long Miles) I am planning on going especially because it doesn’t seem like anyone wants me to go to AWP at the moment. Oh well drinks at the bar with my friends isn’t a bad trade.
PALM BEACH POETRY FESTIVAL
January 19-22, 2006 www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.com
(516) 868-2063
JANE HIRSHFIELD TONY HOAGLAND GALWAY KINNELL
THOMAS LUX MARILYN NELSON SHARON OLDS
LAURE ANNE BOSSELAAR KURT BROWN
SUSAN MITCHELL CAMPBELL MCGRATH
Hi Theresa,
Thanks for the publicity you provided the first Palm Beach Poetry Festival on "early hours of sky"! Posting those photos and all your positive comments is very much appreciated.
As you can see from the letterhead, we have put together a spectacular line up of poets for the 2nd festival, and this time it will be held at Old School Square (oldschool.org) in Delray Beach which is a lovely, lively town with restaurants, art galleries, the new public library, beaches and bars all within easy walking distance of the festival. The Crest Theatre will house the readings and craft talks providing a much better experience for the audience. And the Vintage Gymnasium will serve as our central hospitality center for social events including the gala dinner on Friday evening (now included in the price of a workshop) and a special Saturday Night Coffee House featuring Slam Competition between our poets and Delray Beach Poets.
As you can see we've doubled the number of workshops: six advanced plus two intermediate. And each of them is ten hours, twice as long as the first festival. We'll still require applications to insure good solid discussions and well executed poems in all the workshops. And we've added a Florida Poets reading as well.
I'll be sending out an e-mail to all of the participants in last January's festival, but I couldn't wait to get in touch with you to thank you for your blog!
I hope I'll see you again in January. Winter isn't Winter in Palm Beach County!
Best, Miles
PALM BEACH POETRY FESTIVAL
January 19-22, 2006 www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.com
(516) 868-2063
JANE HIRSHFIELD TONY HOAGLAND GALWAY KINNELL
THOMAS LUX MARILYN NELSON SHARON OLDS
LAURE ANNE BOSSELAAR KURT BROWN
SUSAN MITCHELL CAMPBELL MCGRATH
Hi Theresa,
Thanks for the publicity you provided the first Palm Beach Poetry Festival on "early hours of sky"! Posting those photos and all your positive comments is very much appreciated.
As you can see from the letterhead, we have put together a spectacular line up of poets for the 2nd festival, and this time it will be held at Old School Square (oldschool.org) in Delray Beach which is a lovely, lively town with restaurants, art galleries, the new public library, beaches and bars all within easy walking distance of the festival. The Crest Theatre will house the readings and craft talks providing a much better experience for the audience. And the Vintage Gymnasium will serve as our central hospitality center for social events including the gala dinner on Friday evening (now included in the price of a workshop) and a special Saturday Night Coffee House featuring Slam Competition between our poets and Delray Beach Poets.
As you can see we've doubled the number of workshops: six advanced plus two intermediate. And each of them is ten hours, twice as long as the first festival. We'll still require applications to insure good solid discussions and well executed poems in all the workshops. And we've added a Florida Poets reading as well.
I'll be sending out an e-mail to all of the participants in last January's festival, but I couldn't wait to get in touch with you to thank you for your blog!
I hope I'll see you again in January. Winter isn't Winter in Palm Beach County!
Best, Miles
on my back
I end every day the same way. I lay on my back, my feet hanging off the picnic table and I stare at this tree, until everything becomes clear. Or not, the truth is sometimes it rains or some nights the moon comes and I forget the tree. But it is the only thing I can do now I can’t write or paint. I can teach and lay on picnic tables and a part of me is okay with that. I spent the last three years working so hard on Teresa Ballard the writer I forgot the person.
I am falling in love with poets I never quite understood before. Carolyn Forche was always sending me words from Akhmatova and I was like well that is nice and while I was trying to be a writer I forgot the absolute passion of poetry, that a woman living in the early nineteen hundreds can rip my heart out of my chest.
And for the first time I am truly being still, with not jumping high and if I lose everything and gain the person what loss is that? Today I read these words
It is not with the lyre with someone in love
that I go seducing people.
That the rattle of leper
is what sings in my hands
and I knew that Ana had loved someone and failed someone. And if they had picnic tables back then, she was lying on her back, she was dreaming these words.
I am falling in love with poets I never quite understood before. Carolyn Forche was always sending me words from Akhmatova and I was like well that is nice and while I was trying to be a writer I forgot the absolute passion of poetry, that a woman living in the early nineteen hundreds can rip my heart out of my chest.
And for the first time I am truly being still, with not jumping high and if I lose everything and gain the person what loss is that? Today I read these words
It is not with the lyre with someone in love
that I go seducing people.
That the rattle of leper
is what sings in my hands
and I knew that Ana had loved someone and failed someone. And if they had picnic tables back then, she was lying on her back, she was dreaming these words.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
I am reading Jane Kenyon’s translation of Akhmatova’s poetry. The first thing I open to after the essays:
The memory of sun weakens my heart,
grass turns yellow,
wind blows the early flakes of snow
lightly, lightly.
Already the narrow canals have stopped flowing:
water freezes.
Nothing will ever happen here-
not ever.
Against the empty sky the willow opens
a transparent fan.
Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not
your wife.
The memory of sun weakens my heart.
What’s this? Darkness?
It’s possible. And this may be the first night
of winter.
Ana is killing me. I realize this what I love about Kenyon’s work, what I love about Akhamtova’s work. It is the simple. It is what happens to us all.
The memory of sun weakens my heart,
grass turns yellow,
wind blows the early flakes of snow
lightly, lightly.
Already the narrow canals have stopped flowing:
water freezes.
Nothing will ever happen here-
not ever.
Against the empty sky the willow opens
a transparent fan.
Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not
your wife.
The memory of sun weakens my heart.
What’s this? Darkness?
It’s possible. And this may be the first night
of winter.
Ana is killing me. I realize this what I love about Kenyon’s work, what I love about Akhamtova’s work. It is the simple. It is what happens to us all.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Today we made shiny sculptures to hang from trees and I had a group of six year olds work on a mosaic sink for the art school. The small things I offer to the universe b/c I can do nothing else but say, here are the ropes to string, the ropes which hold us.
I understand that if I get through this summer with all my fingers it may be a luxury, today I was holding a pipe while an 8 yr old worked the saw and I thought I love my fingers, my fingers are good fingers Tomorrow I will bring work gloves.
I have the best knife in the world, it cuts everything. It is the best knife I have ever had. It is purple and beautiful, more me than anything else in the workshop. It has flowers. It is a don’t fluck with me I am great teacher kind of knife. It will carry me to the other side of the summer.
I understand that if I get through this summer with all my fingers it may be a luxury, today I was holding a pipe while an 8 yr old worked the saw and I thought I love my fingers, my fingers are good fingers Tomorrow I will bring work gloves.
I have the best knife in the world, it cuts everything. It is the best knife I have ever had. It is purple and beautiful, more me than anything else in the workshop. It has flowers. It is a don’t fluck with me I am great teacher kind of knife. It will carry me to the other side of the summer.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Pure Sex
When the door opens, of sensuality,
then you will understand it too. The struggle begins.
Never again to be free of it,
often you will feel it to be your enemy.
Sometimes
you will almost suffocate
such joy it brings.
Rukeyser 1968
The first time I ever saw an exhibit of O’Keefe paintings I gasped out loud at the pure “sex” of it. Granted I was a child girl and the pure sex of anything excited and terrified me. One of the greatest disservices we have done to art, in my opinion, is to objectify it. The O’Keefe you see on coffee mugs, calendars is not the art hanging on the wall. I have seen the difference and the space is immeasurable.
It is rumored, Millay and O’Keefe had a writing affair that the two minds interacted so well but were separated at the time by distance and convention. I have once read Millay under her paintings. I can see the attraction.
The pure sex of a poem has nothing to do, (again my opinion) with being sexy, one can see a vagina in O’Keefe’s paintings yet the painting is not truly about the anatomy of a woman’s body. When art posses the pure sex of itself it is doing nothing more than taking you to the deepest part, its origin. It moves by its simplicity. The rules are not complicated. No one has good sex by thinking about it. No one feels comfortable in their sensuality by saying, today I will feel comfortable. It is the act of being present, of allowing yourself to be stripped (no irony here) of outer layers.
There will always be those who confuse pure sex with the act. Who claim the sexuality of a poem or art has to do with the erotic. I have found the two very rarely even hold hands. When we do this, we limit our possibility. We say there can be no love unless we close the distance and modify the convention.
then you will understand it too. The struggle begins.
Never again to be free of it,
often you will feel it to be your enemy.
Sometimes
you will almost suffocate
such joy it brings.
Rukeyser 1968
The first time I ever saw an exhibit of O’Keefe paintings I gasped out loud at the pure “sex” of it. Granted I was a child girl and the pure sex of anything excited and terrified me. One of the greatest disservices we have done to art, in my opinion, is to objectify it. The O’Keefe you see on coffee mugs, calendars is not the art hanging on the wall. I have seen the difference and the space is immeasurable.
It is rumored, Millay and O’Keefe had a writing affair that the two minds interacted so well but were separated at the time by distance and convention. I have once read Millay under her paintings. I can see the attraction.
The pure sex of a poem has nothing to do, (again my opinion) with being sexy, one can see a vagina in O’Keefe’s paintings yet the painting is not truly about the anatomy of a woman’s body. When art posses the pure sex of itself it is doing nothing more than taking you to the deepest part, its origin. It moves by its simplicity. The rules are not complicated. No one has good sex by thinking about it. No one feels comfortable in their sensuality by saying, today I will feel comfortable. It is the act of being present, of allowing yourself to be stripped (no irony here) of outer layers.
There will always be those who confuse pure sex with the act. Who claim the sexuality of a poem or art has to do with the erotic. I have found the two very rarely even hold hands. When we do this, we limit our possibility. We say there can be no love unless we close the distance and modify the convention.
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