Stream of Consciousness

Back from Poetry Camp

I am just back from a week at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference at Fort Worden, a Washington State Park and yes, where they filmed parts of "An Officer and a Gentleman" way back when...

Started in 1974—and attended by many writing rock stars, beginners who became writing rock stars, and humble beginners— this conference is one of the oldie but goodies, before the MFA low-residency frenzy began its ascendancy and made it more than challenging to separate the creative writing wheat from the chaff.

What a week, what a whirl! Cafeteria trays, single beds in our dorm rooms (more like a monk's cell) but I got lucky and my room #66 had a deluxe view of Whidbey Island across Admiralty Bay and, by Thursday, snow-capped Cascades. Workshop each morning where we dissected and re-assembled the nerdy art and craft of writing poetry. Then afternoons, more special topics and a craft lecture at 4 p.m. Nights were mostly readings—which I mostly skipped because I have discovered I really do not get that much out of them so why not read a book instead?

Had a great, beyond great, poetry teacher, Dana Levin. More luck because I had no idea what to expect when I signed up for her "Poetry and the Unconscious" back in November 2009, the first day of registration. I picked her class mostly because she had a thorough description already available on the site, unlike some of the other teachers...turns out that was a good omen as she is a thorough and thoroughly prepared teaching professional. Which, in my view, does make a difference.

I'll have more to share about the experience once I unpacked, get the mountains of laundry done, sort through the piles...

Poetry and the Sound of the Pacific Ocean

 

I am in Newport, Oregon for the Northwest Poets' Concord this weekend, a veritable grassroots gathering of the poetic tribes, many who, like me, are not affiliated with academia. How refreshing! There is nothing like going to sleep with the sliding glass doors of your hotel room open and the unceasing sound of the waves hitting the sand your lullaby...

Two other poets and I presented a panel on Friday afternoon about what it has been like returning to poetry as "late bloomers." Later there was a reading of ars poetica, e.g.,  poems writtten about the subject of poetry itself. I read this poem by W.S. Merwin—which isn't really about the poet, John Berryman, even thought the title might lead you to believe that:

Berryman

I will tell you what he told me

in the years just after the war

as we then called

the second world war

 

don’t lose your arrogance yet he said

you can do that when you’re older

lose it too soon and you may

merely replace it with vanity

 

just one time he suggested

changing the usual order

of the same words in a line of verse

why point out a thing twice

 

he suggested I pray to the Muse

get down on my knees and pray

right there in the corner and he

said he meant it literally

 

it was in the days before the beard

and the drink but he was deep

in tides of his own through which he sailed

chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

 

he was far older than the dates allowed for

much older than I was he was in his thirties

he snapped down his nose with an accent

I think he had affected in England

 

as for publishing he advised me

to paper my wall with rejection slips

his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled

with the vehemence of his views about poetry

 

he said the great presence

that permitted everything and transmuted it

in poetry was passion

passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

 

I had hardly begun to read

I asked how can you ever be sure

that what you write is really

any good at all and he said you can’t

 

you can’t you can never be sure

you die without knowing

whether anything you wrote was any good

if you have to be sure don’t write

Here We Are in the Years...

...when the showman shifts the gears, lives become careers, children cry in fear, let us out of here.

—Neil Young

A dear, dear friend from my long ago past life was found this week. What a gift that is! I, who pride myself on not losing touch with those I hold so near and dear lost this person, how, I don't even recall. But now he's found, thanks to a mutual pal who braved the vagaries of Facebook to connect with him. And already, after a mere 24 hours of e-mail back-and-forth, man oh man, there are some people you just pick up with where you left off...

When was the last time I saw G.? 1978 or 1979? Before I moved up the road to Ithaca, New York? My son was 1 or 2; he'll be 33 this coming June. A life, a generation unfolding, days passing, so much time gone. G. said in an e-mail, and rightly so:

"Time eats us alive. Mozart died at 35 and Louis Kahn built his first building after 50. It's a minute by minute thing with no real boundaries. It's a dream."

Damn if he isn't absolutely, ineluctably right.

Photo: One John took of the damn coolest outdoor art exhibit: one-dimensional but stand-up photograph/cut-outs of African immigrants living throughout Italy. It was staged in Campo San Margherita, April 2008, when we were living in our Venetian apartment a short stroll across the Rio San Barnaba canal. Shortly after, it moved on to Roma.

Blogging These Days...

...at www.writersdojo.org. Follow this link for Nancy Flynn's explorations of life, liberty, and the pursuit of creative writing happiness on my blog, Apostrophe. 

Off to La La Land...

The City of Angels, Los Angeles, to see C. and see what nightmare urban sprawl really looks like after all these years. Then to Yosemite on Monday. It's been an exhausting few weeks with political ups, downs, and gaping-open mouths of disbelief. Who knows where the time goes? All I know if that November 4th can't come fast enough for me...

The End of the Road

We have arrived. Here. The end of the road. A small wiggle that peters out on every map. What is here? A noisy, churning brook. Vertical mountains that were lit earlier by unexpected, almost out-of-place lightning and thunder for this time of year. A small deck off a cottage where, wrapped in fleece and WiFi, I can inhale a clean drink of fir and pine. This may  be some of the best it gets. In addition to nature, we also have the best pizza in Oregon because a New York City transplant (long freaking story with Hollywood money in the mix) landed in this neck of the wood and set up shop. Greasy, gorgeously triangular, flat, cheesy, delicious, every single slice. Are we back in high-calorie heaven yet? Gary and Wide's blues festival radio show just finished. DJs with good DJ voices? Who knew?

It's holiday time here at Wallowa Lake. Tomorrow, a few errands, and a gathering at Terminal Gravity for food and brews by eve.  Before that? Waking, walking, breathing. We are so lucky! As it say on a poster in our Flying Arrow cabin (below the head of a dead deer -- fine by me I hate those f-ers) "If you're lucky enough to be in the mountains, you're lucky enough." Aloha and mahalo!

Wing and the Wheel

A pigeon just flew past our open living room window. Earlier today I saw one emerge from the front door of a cafe along a narrow calle behind the swank Grand Canal hotels.  Friday must be changing-of-the-tourist-guard at Ca' Rezzonico, the B&B next door, because the sound of wheeled luggage on the stones of the fondamenta has been the soundtrack clatter as we recover from today's outing (and 7+ miles of walking and art-viewing), as I rested and read a novel on the couch.

Clouds have appeared to cover today's cielo azzuro, to inch the thermometer down, make it almost too chilly to have the shutters and windows open, the fresh (mostly) air lifting up from the Rio de San Barnaba canal. Today our paths to and from the Correr Museum took us through the Campi of San Maurizio and San Moise, past the high-end retail of Prada, Gucci, Chanel, Ferragamo--I'm so out of it anymore I don't even know the names of all the fashion houses. What I did notice is that fashion has definitely co-opted (it's been going on for some time I guess) the hippie style that those of us of a certain age felt we invented, out of ease and practicality, 35 or 40 years ago. What goes around comes around but, increasingly, seems to be tied to turning every damn thing into a marketable commodity, taking anything that would reflect an individual's elan, esprit, sense of color and zest and life, and selling it until it becomes banal and a fad. Now I really sound cranky and middle-aged. Maybe I'm mostly unhappy I can't fit into all the skinny, skimpy fashions? Meanwhile, many of the locals, the Venetian women of all ages -- shopkeepers, professoressas, studenti, etc.  -- look very stunning when they are out and about.

It's almost Friday night and there is jazz at the Jazz Club across the street but  I'll be amazed if I can keep my eyes open past 9 pm. This is one of the downsides of being "middle-aged" and trying to be in a tourist a-go-go mode day in and out. The need for naps and regular meals catches up with one. Well, at least me.

As we wandered through the Campo San Maurizio ceramics fair (pottery here similar to what we find at the Oregon Country Fair -- amateur) to and from the Correr, we passed plaques that commemorated the visit, the brief stay, the passing through of Dante, Goethe, and Mozart. Fancy markers, chiseled and secured high into the wall above a bridge or along a canal in Mozart's case.

Rain Falling on a Venetian Canal

John's been having so much fun documenting the first days of our holiday in Venezia -- see   John's Blog --  that I thought I'd join in and add some daily posts of my own. This morning is the first day we've had rain, and cooler temperatures after an absolutely stunning Sunday of spring warmth--and the crowds of both tourists and out-and-about Venetians in campi, crossing ponti, and crowding calli and fondamente in every sestiere of the city. And how do we know this? Because we were in five out of six on Sunday, our Bataan death march of sorts, that started out innocently enough as a stroll to end up at the gothic cathedral of San Zanipolo and ended up with a few wrong turns and nine miles as clocked on the pedometer at my waist. John had already done five miles earlier in the morning while I recovered from jet lag by sleeping in...

We're having a slow start today. That's the beauty of being here for longer than a few days. We don't feel like we have to cram everything in, like we have to be on-the-go touring and taking it all in in every waking moment. It will be nice to have a break from so much city hiking today.  The big plan is to stroll to the very nearby Campo San Rocco and see the Tintorettoes in the scuola there and maybe pop into the Frari again to marvel at Titian's paintings...

After finishing the last of three  memoirs that all ended up with the common theme of women adopted at infancy or giving children up for adoption, I'm now read Joseph Brodsky's book about Venice, Watermark. It's  a series of short meditations on this city, how he came to be enchanted by it, and why he ended up choosing to be buried here when he died in 1996. All a prelude to a visit to the cemetery island where other luminaries have their final resting places as well.  Tomorrow we are off to Padova by train. Our admission time for the Scrovegni Chapel is 12:45 pm. Like the Sistine Chapel, these art treasures require tickets in order to control the madding crowds.

Other favorite moments so far? 

After an exhausting 24 hours off travel, sitting out in the open air on the back of the Alilaguna water bus just after sunset, the wind off the water in my face, the lights of Venice and the Lido still off in the distance, beckoning us on.

Wandering into the eastern corner of Castello the first evening we were here until we find ourselves on the tiny island of San Pietro near the boat yards where old vaporetti go to be repaired and/or rust and realizing we have walked ourselves off the trusty Rough Guide map.

My first gatto sighting down the unmowed, grassy path into a prison over on the Giudecca where we stayed in the Hilton Molino Stucky our first two nights.

Off to Venezia!

We're about to take a Radio Cab to the airport and start our long journey to Venice, Italy. This vegetable and fruit boat is just down the street -- well rather, canal -- from our apartment. Address is 2817 Dorsoduro, not far from Campo San Barnabe where we'll be enjoying our mid-morning caffe by the weekend...

Ciao!

Back from the Friendly Skies

I arrived back to sane, springing-ahead Portland last night, weary from my sojourn to home turf in northeastern Pennsylvania and a pilgrimage to icy, snow-drift and dreary Ithaca for a friend's memorial service on March 1st. It was a grueling trip. Lots of down time, time to observe the shabby, broken-down weariness of that part of the east. Time to obsessively read Philip Roth and reflect on my own exile, to make peace with why I can't truly ever go home again and, more and more, no longer want to. Maybe everybody else by their middle age has made peace with this scenario but me. And, perhaps in ways, I too already have. But this trip really brought it horribly home: the fearfulness, the general daily anxiety, the xenophobia about outsiders (and that catchall category can include just about anybody), the overall weariness associated with travel in a too-crowded, crumbling-infrastructure place. Highlights were the real bagels and pizza. And, of course, seeing Ithaca friends. It's good to be back even if my life here needs re-structuring, new priorities, and more unpacking awaits. The camellia is blooming and there are happy daffodils in the back garden yard. I may have to re-read Thomas Wolfe on home, place, exile, and family to re-gain some universally-acknowledged perspectives on why some of us, particularly the creative ones, often have to head, solo and unscripted, out into the big, bad world.