A Poet Walks into a Bar. . .

So there I was, sitting at the bar in the restaurant at the NJ Performing Arts Center surrounded by (among other amazing poets):

Patricia Smith, four time National Poetry Slam individual champion, and
Natasha Trethewey, the current US Poet Laureate, and
Nikky Finney, the 2011 National Book Award recipient for poetry

If you know me at all, you know I'm not a name-dropper. I am not the kind of person who brags about who she knows. But this was pretty freaking amazing. 

Dodge was pretty freaking amazing. There is something magical about spending several days in the company of people who are passionate about the power and majesty of language. It inspired me to get back into the habit of reading and writing poetry regularly.

I also tend to forget just how important hearing the 'music' in poetry can be and how different words on the page are from words spoken aloud. Reminder number two: attend local poetry readings!

This is a draft of something I wrote on the train, heading down from Boston to New Jersey. 

Tickets, Please
(Dodge Poetry Festival, day 1)

On the train, my mind spins as fast
as the wheels. Fall unwinds itself.  Leaves
leap back to tree trunks, green siphons
off the reds and golds. When we slip
past coastal Connecticut, water finally
reminds me of the tide of my own breath.
I want to keep moving. Away from the place

I left in the cold hours of a mid-October
Boston morning, not nearly in the place
my ticket spells out: Newark, New Jersey,
my destination, a city with more
to prove than my adopted home. I wonder
what I have to prove. That I can make it
here alone, suddenly motherless at forty-nine?

I am no longer balanced between
generations anymore. This is introductory
geography, basic arithmetic. Simple. Like childhood
is simple, meaning the confusion is somehow
straightforward now. No matter what, the dead continue
to remain dead. Leaves don't fall up,
and at each stop, some people get off this train.

Poetry Comes from Everywhere

This weekend, I immersed myself in the world of poetry by way of the Geraldine R Dodge Poetry Festival. I've been to this incredible event before--it's held every two years, now in Newark, NJ, and I always emerge energized and inspired by the sheer beauty of words.

This post is about how poetry can come from anywhere.

I haven't been writing poetry in some time. I have journalled, and written prose, but the necessary stillness to sit down and craft a poem has eluded me of late.

But something in the atmosphere at Dodge had me filling the little page of a red notebook and Friday afternoon, I received a few texts from my 16 year old son that inspired this poem.

Bad Dog

Thanks to technology, I now know
the dog has pooped in the middle
of my son's room. I know it in real
time, the phone buzzing with insistence,
its Alice-in-Wonderland "read me".
And make no mistake--when it vibrates
its rectangular black body against my pocket,
I snatch it up, looking for wisdom
in its fortune cookie fortune
length text. "Guess who pooped
in my room?" it reads. Does he mean
for me to jump right on the train, four
hours home to clean it up? Or is it a less
than subtle rebuke. Both on the dog's part
and my son's. Or does he only mean to share
his exasperation, a wry commentary
from a nearly adult to a practicing one? The dog
pooped in his room. I refuse to remind him
to scoop it up, flush it down, lecture
about the need for more frequent walks.
He doesn't need that and the dog,
he too, knows better.

--draft, ljcohen, October 2012

Dispatches from Dodge: thoughts on '10

I am home again.

This weekend was all about words; their music, their beauty. Words and the essential, crucial importance of words.

Dodge '10 was a gift. And a gift that was nearly taken away before it could be wrapped and offered. I am beyond grateful that Dodge happened.

All weekend long, people were talking about the new venue. "What do you think of Newark?" was often a topic of conversation. My reading of the consensus was that the venue had some advantages and some disadvantages. No one missed the mud, though even I was a bit nostalgic for the cold rain and leaky tents in both '04 on the Duke estate and '06 at Waterloo Village. There was something of a camaraderie of misery with all of us huddling for warmth and comfort.

I think that the Dodge foundation and NJPAC did a great job putting together an urban poetry village. Of course the beautiful weather was a plus. :) And the poetry. Glorious poetry. Well, that is the joy of Dodge in any venue.

My own opinion is that the urban setting made the festival more accessible to more people, especially those who might have only been able to come for one day, or at best a part of Dodge. Having such easy mass transit access across NJ and in and out of NY was a bonus.

The organization was superb with plenty of volunteers available to give directions or other needed information. I loved the free shuttle into the Ironbound section of Newark. Yummy food to be had there!

The main stage at NJPAC is a thing of beauty. With amazing acoustics. My ONE main complaint was the assigned seating. In the old venue, the main tent allowed for mingling and an ability to come and go from event to event on a more casual basis. There was an almost uncomfortable formality about the rigid seating that made it difficult to make new friends 'on the fly' and attend the main stage readings with them. I missed that about previous festivals.

I would also have liked to see some seating (picnic benches?) or some small tents on the common/park by the main food court across the street from NJPAC. There were very few people congregating there. In fact, several festival goers I spoke with didn't realize there were more food choices there. It would have been nice to have some more informal venues for public/open readings. That would have been a good place to have them.

I *loved* all the recycling centers. Kudos to Dodge for working toward a greener festival.

One last sadness: there was no morning Rumi or Coleman Barks. I really missed those early morning sessions.

Overall, thumbs up to Newark on bringing poetry to the city, and welcoming all of us with open arms. I am renewed. I am inspired. I am peaceful and fierce, full of words.

I am counting down to '12.

Dispatches from Dodge '10, Day 3

Saturday

This morning I let Galway Kinnell's reading of the Duino Elegies pour through me. I didn't try to hold them. I just let the river of words sweep me into the great sea of collective unconscious, mortality, death, and longing. I am shaken. It was as if Rilke returned from the dead to speak to my heart, hijacking Kinnell's voice.

How does he do that?

How does he use language to lull me into some almost hypnotic trance only to choose a word or phrase, a line that arrows its way to strike a bulls-eye in the hollow of my throat. It leaves me gasping, drowning in my own heartache.

Rilke. He undoes me. I need to write about butterflies and puppy dogs if I'm going to be able to breathe again.


Poetry as Prayer, Poetry as Curse

"prayer is always aware the darkness is close at hand." and "There is a thin line between poetry as prayer and poetry as curse." -Hadara Bar-Nadav

Words are a way to solidify intention -Tara Betts

Meanness never makes sustaining art -Matthew Dickman

The talks and the readings are only part of the magic at Dodge. The people you meet, talk with, discover as family are another.

Tonight I met a long-lost-never-met-before friend. (Hi Diana!) She joined my friend Sue and I for dinner and we had such a wonderful evening of conversation, laughter, and sharing that none of us noticed we took the shuttle outbound instead of inbound to the Performing Arts Center and ended up late to the evening readings as a result.

It didn't matter. The long, rambling, full of laughter conversation was just right. Balm for the mortal heart, calm for an overflowing mind.

Tomorrow this diaspora will close down its tents, pack its bags, and leave town, words scattered in its wake. And it will be a long two years until it comes again.

Dispatches from Dodge '10, Day 2

I keep having to remind myself it's Friday. All these people milling about, sitting sprawled in the grass or around tables with coffee talking poetry. It feels like a Saturday.

Today at Dodge, I focused on the series of talks called Poets on Poetry. A random assortment of poetic ramblings and wisdom from the day:

Matthew Dickman
"language is a type of failure"
"ecstatic love and deep grief defy language"
"poetic language picks up the rubble of life's experience"
"art can save your life"
"be a fan of your failures"

Sharon Olds
"A poem is for the writing of another poem"
"I don't know what I'm doing"
"I write humongous amounts of bad poems."

Kwame Dawes
"Poems are a way to manage the chaos of the universe"
The art of empathy is to be able to feel with but not to be consumed by what you are feeling
"The failure of empathy is the failure of imagination"
"Empathy starts with listening"

Michael Dickman
On Neruda: "I didn't know anyone could express themselves with language like that."
"Committed to writing poems regardless of the outcome."
"Writing has never made me feel good."

Today was a day of students and teachers. Of teens from schools in NJ and environs taking it all in, breathing poetry like air.

This is a first draft for all of them, the intense, the eager, the hungry, the uncertain:

Here is beauty. Your dreadlocks
are beautiful. Your eager
acne marked face is beautiful.
Your mismatched socks, one
blue, one green, the colors of earth
against lean brown legs, beautiful.
Your canted eyes, your epicanthic fold
magnified beneath thick
black glasses. Your blond hair,
bleached and overdyed purple
is beautiful. And your smooth hair, your
kinky hair, your buzz cut. All
beautiful. Your self conscious
scribblings, the ones you never show
a soul, the ones you post
on a facebook wall. The ones
you abandon without signing
on the cafeteria's steel table;
all beautiful. I want you to know
just how beautiful you are.
Then I will know it too. Tell it
true to the girl who sits
one bench over, all gawky limbs
and question mark spine,
her hand scratching
across the page.

Dispatches from Dodge '10, Day 1

It's been four years since I was able to attend the Dodge Poetry Festival. For some time, it even looked as if there wouldn't be a 2010 Dodge because of financial constraints, both within the foundation and outside it with its venue partner in Waterloo Village.

But poets and poetry prevailed and Dodge 2010 is now.

And in an urban venue.

I'm here in Newark (actually, about twenty minutes away at a friend's place) and it's quite a different experience than my previous festivals. I miss the big tent and the outdoor venues. I don't miss the cold rain, the mud, and the leaky tents.

I will miss Coleman Barks and his early morning Rumi. In both of the festivals I attended, his morning readings were the perfect start to a day of poetry.

The performance space at the NJPAC is really beautiful and the acoustics are marvelous, but sitting in assigned seats gives the readings a more formal feel than in the past. It's also trickier to come and go during the readings.

But I will happily trade any of my nitpicks for the opportunity to be here again, to have this festival, this celebration of words go on.

Getting Outta Dodge. . .

Actually, I'm heading *into* Dodge. The Dodge Poetry Festival, actually. If you're in the Newark NJ area any time between this coming Thursday, October 7 and Sunday October 10, and you are a lover of words, do try to attend.

I will be there, immersed in words, baptized in words, swimming in words. It's glorious and terrifying and I come home filled up, inspired, and awed at the power of those tiny building blocks of our writing craft.

I wasn't able to be at the last festival, in '08 because of a family commitment, but I was there in '06 and '04. When I tell you Dodge is a life changing event, you might think me guilty of hyperbole. But in truth, it was at Dodge '04 when I realized I was a writer. Not just a physical therapist/wife/mother who wrote too, but a Writer. From that moment on, I began to take my writing seriously and professionally. It was a watershed for me.

If you're going to be there, please leave a comment, or pop me an email. I'd love to connect at Dodge.

Happy writing!

6 months until Dodge!

If you're a poet, or if you love words, run do not walk to Newark, NJ on October 7-10, 2010 for the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.

It has been described as Woodstock for Poets and has been happening every 2 years since 1986. 2010 was the year it almost didn't return.

But thanks to the passion and support of writers and lovers of words world-wide, Dodge is happening, albeit in a different venue.

I will be there all 4 days, this time around. I was fortunate to attend in 2004 and 2006, but was unable to swing 2008.

Will I see you there?

2009--A Writer's Year in Review

I've taken the opportunity to look back at the year in writing each December.  Previous posts are here:  2008, 2007, 2006

When I look back several years to when my writing journey began, I see several themes emerge.  Writing takes hard work, persistence, and a hopeful attitude.  

Even from my very first draft of my very first novel, I was willing to put in the time to make it the best I could.  And I had a strong belief that I could succeed.  Back then, success meant finishing a novel.  Once that happened, then success meant writing another novel.  Then learning the realities of publishing and finding an agent.

At each stage, I was able to realize 'success', and raise the bar to the next level, all the while, being just naive and just hopeful enough to believe I could reach the goal.

And I have.

2009 was the year that I believed I could be a professional writer.  It was the year of the agent.  (Waves to Nephele!)  It was the year of the submission process (and the year of learning patience).  It was the year of setting and meeting writing challenges and deadlines.

Writing accomplishments for 2009:

Novels:
Completed "The Between"
Began and Completed "Future Tense"
Edited "The House of Many Doors"
Edited "MindBlind"
Edited "Heal Thyself"


Poetry:
Poems written and/or substantially revised: 12


Short Stories
Written and/or substantially revised:  7

My goals for 2009 were:
1. to return to my 1,000 words/day or 5,000 words/week pace  I think I accomplished this with a vengeance, completing a first draft of "Future Tense" in 10 weeks.

2. to allow myself the freedom to work on a crappy first draft  Again, accomplished, though I understand my process well enough to know I will never work at a 'nano' pace and that my first draft process does include back reading and editing.

3. to find a 'just right' in person writing group  I have found a once per month writing group that emerged from a workshop I took last year.  While it is mostly short story writers, it is a good group of folks and I get a lot out of it.


My goals for 2010:
  1.  Be ready with a marketing plan for when my first novel sells.  (While I would love to set publication of my first novel as a goal, I also understand that it is not under my control, so instead, I will set the part I can accomplish.)

  2. Appropriately use social networking tools to build connections with writers and readers, while not getting sucked into a black hole of time wasting on the net.  I already have a website.  I've been consistently  blogging for several years.  This year I added FB and twitter to the list, but can fritter away too many hours. Must be aware of this in 2010.

  3. Return to my 'roots' of writing poetry.  This is something I neglected in '09.  I also would like to teach poetry more workshops in the schools this year.  And I am so looking forward to Dodge '10!

Hard work.
Persistence.
Hopeful attitude.

These are the attributes I continue to take with me on my writing journey.


All the best in '10 to all my writer friends.

The Ressurection of Dodge

Every since the announcement came early in 2009 that the Geraldine R Dodge foundation had to cancel its biennial poetry festival and there would not be a Dodge in 2010, I've been in denial. I've been like a toddler with my fingers in my ears. (La, la, la I can't hear you.) That's because after experiencing the magic of Dodge in 2004 and 2006, and having to miss 2008 (darn you, family obligations!), I had pledged that I would be there in 2010.

In my heart of hearts, I believed there had to be a way to make Dodge happen. And today, I saw this: Dodge is coming back for 2010 and in Newark NJ. They haven't announced dates yet, but I will move heaven and earth to be there.

If you haven't heard of the Dodge poetry Festival, take a look at their website--they have the past program and videos of past festival events. Bill Moyers once described it as Woodstock for poets.

I've also blogged about my past festivals.

If you are a poet, go. If you are a writer, go. If you are a lover of words, go. The festival is a multi-day immersion into the magic of words, poetry, and poets. I am so thrilled that it can be part of my life again.

Poetry Thursday and Poet January

After a long hiatus, I came back to "Poetry Thursday" for a visit. And (wow!), have things changed. New website, new interface, new content, new organization. The site looks terrific.

And one of the new columnists for Poetry Thursday is January O'Neill of Poetmom. She and I both live in Massachusetts, but we've only 'met' in cyberspace. (We were both at Dodge, but didn't know it--in fact, she's actually in one of the photos I took there--completely by accident!)

Last night I got a chance to meet January at a reading she gave not far from where I live. It was a wonderful event (even though I was 30 minutes late--parking in Arlington center is a *nightmare*) and the reception afterwards was in a lovely indie bookstore.

I find it interesting--this intersection of one of the oldest human traditions--poetry--with one of the newest--the internet. It is likely I never would have met January in the normal course of my life. We live about 20 miles apart (which doesn't sound like a lot unless you've tried to get to and from Boston's north shore) and my life is fairly closely tied to my husband and children and my part time physical therapy practice.

Truth of the matter is I don't get out much. :) Certainly not on weeknights and certainly not without my family as entourage. It was a treat to spend an evening with fellow writers, to hear the music of beautiful poetry, and to meet January.

Real Life and Virtual Life

Blogging has been sparse of late, primarily due to the press of real life demands cutting into my 'virtual' time. Our eldest son had his Bar Mitzvah last Saturday and managing the endless details of a life cycle event like that and its attendant festivities was both more work and even more joyous than I had anticipated.

And in the aftermath of attending my second Dodge Poetry Festival, I am deep into self-assessment mode with my writing. I have written next to nothing since I came home.

This isn't surprising. The same thing happened the last Dodge. I think I get so 'filled' by poetry and learning that it takes some time to integrate the new knowledge into the old. It's less writer's block than writer's glut and I know my writing will take on new dimensions as a result.

But onto 'virtual life'.

It is certainly an internet cliche that meeting someone in real life that one has cultivated a friendship with on the 'net can lead to disillusionment or even personal danger. (As a friend commented, she watches too many CSI/Without a trace/Law and Order reruns to think otherwise.)

My experience has been quite different and perhaps it is because those I have met have been writers and poets, rather than people trying to construct an alternate and artificial life for themselves.

Two years ago at Dodge, I met Laurie Byro, a poet from New Jersey whose work I had admired at Wild Poetry Forum for many years. She is lovely and gracious and is not an ax murderer or a 60 year old man with a beer belly pretending to be a poet. :)

This year at Dodge, I met Russ Bowden. He compiles the wonderful resource "Poetry and Poets in Rags" each week for the benefit of the writing community. He lives scant miles from me in the Boston area, but finally met 6+ hours away in NJ. We had actually been at the same local poetry event, but didn't realize it until after the fact as we hadn't met at that point. He's not an ax murderer either.

I've invited fellow poet Chuck Levenstein to a poetry reading and recently met him for coffee in Newton. He is a fascinating conversationalist and I saw neither ax nor chainsaw in his briefcase. He was kind enough to gift me with his latest poetry collection though. :)

Yesterday, I had lunch with Jim Doss. He was in Boston for business and we arranged to meet downtown for an hour or so. He was one of my co-editors for Poets Gone Wild, which we worked on through the technological advantages of cyberspace--email and chat. We have both posted our poetry on 'Wild' for many years and have critiqued each other's work with honesty and respect. I think I embarrassed him, asking him to sign his book for me.

How could we fail to have enjoyed one another's company? We are both poets, both married with school age kids, and both have pet rats. :) And I felt fairly certain that he couldn't have smuggled his ax on the airplane from Maryland.

So my track record thus far--4 internet poets (one internet fiction writer that I had the pleasure to meet last year) and not a single person with evil theme music.

Lisa: 5, Ax murderers: 0

So far, so good.

Dispatch from Dodge, last day, Sunday Oct 1

I woke to more rain and the tightness in my chest has deepened into a cough lodged partway between a tickle and pain. Coffee smells stale in my cup and I worry about the drive home.

But I am here and this homecoming from diaspora only happens every other year.

I track fresh mud to the car and drive one final time into Waterloo Village.

Coleman Barks and Robert Bly had already begun their poetic volley: the poems of Rumi and Hafez. Music darts between them, a tongue between teeth, and just as essential to meaning.

Bly brings the Ghazal to sweet new life, the repetition joyous, not cloying in his mouth. Glen Valez makes his drum magic while his wife, Lori Cotler, sits near us cradled in the same web of sound.

The sun came out as I walked out of the main tent, shining on bedraggled poets, leaking, dripping tents, mud strewn paths, gravel.

Later, I am sitting in a NJ diner. The clink, clink, clink of spoons against cups is a kind of poetry, the dull buzz of rising conversations a music. Speakers thrum with 70's music and I wish they would be struck dumb. I prefer that other, older music, the tentative rhythm of humans making noise alone and then together, not even knowing they are composing an endless symphony.

The chicken soup soothes my throat and chest and the waitress really calls me 'hon.'

Dodge photos, redux

Intruducing Rus Bowden to Lori Byro--virtual life meets real life.


Coleman Barks read Rumi saturday and sunday mornings.


Robert Bly joined Coleman Barks sunday morning.

More Pictures from Dodge

Some photos of Waterloo Village--at least when the rain stopped!

Pictures from Dodge

Meeting fellow Massachusetts poet and blogger Steve Sherlock.

Lori Cotler and Glen Valez make music magic.

Lori Cotler and Glen Valez have an impromptu jam session with poet Ekiwah Adler-Belendez.

Kurtis Lamkin holds us spellbound with his poetry and his kora.

Dispatch from Dodge, Saturday September 30, part 2

I have been taking photographs since Thursday afternoon, but neglected to bring the cable that attaches the camera to the PC, so I will have to edit in photos later.

The books I purchased here thus far:

"Here, Bullet," by Brian Turner
"Fooling with Words," Bill Moyers (came out of 1998 Dodge)
"The Last Uncle," by Linda Pastan
"Donkey Gospel," by Tony Hoagland

In the weeks that follow, I will try to post review of these books, as well as the CDs I purchased of Glen Valez and Lori Cotler.


This evening, in the main tent, we were treated to 21 poets reading over the course of 3 hours, loosely organized around a theme of 'How is the truth to be said."

The truth of living in the world, the truth of war, the truth of loss and death, of beauty and laughter. Each poet's view and version of truth moved me.

I didn't open my notebook once, just let myself listen without trying to capture anything more than the moment in the moment.

During a break, I walked outside in the chilly air and found Rus Bowden and again experienced that peculiar familiar/unfamiliar feeling when you meet someone you have only had a correspondence with. Funny that we meet for the first time in New Jersey, when we both live in the Boston area.

I had a lovely conversation with him, then we stood in the back of the (SRO) tent to listen to the last of the evening's poets, including Andrew Motion, Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Gerald Stern, and Ko Un.

The Paul Winter Consort took us home with a beautiful set, including whale songs and a communal wolf howl.

I cannot believe that it ends tomorrow.

Dispatch from Dodge, Saturday September 30, part 1

Technical difficulties have plagued blogging today. This is the third time I have tried to complete this post, only to have my trusty laptop flash a brief and thoroughly unsatisfying and confusing error message and reboot, taking the beginings of this post with it.

Now that I am stopping to save the post as a draft, the computer will undoubtedly behave.

My ears echo with the wail of a saxophone and the chorus of wolfsong, but that is from this evening's events and for part 2 of this dispatch.

It is nearly tomorrow, but I will begin with this morning.

I woke early, the fog in my brain met and matched by a ground fog that filled the shallow basin of the valley where the Dodge Festival is held. It swirled around our ankles like the collective exhale of a thousand poets.

In the main tent, sleepy poets sipped coffee and woke up to Coleman Barks and the Paul Winter Consort.


The Water Wheel
By Rumi (1207-1273)
Translated by Coleman Barks

Stay together, friends.
Do not scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made
of being awake.

The waterwheel accepts water
and turns and gives it away,
weeping.

That way it stays in the garden,
whereas another roundness rolls
through a dry riverbed looking
for what it thinks it wants.

Stay here, quivering with each moment
like a drop of mercury.

I have heard him before--last Dodge, in '04, the Rumi sessions with the Consort were one of the highlights of my experience and I was eager to hear them again. He repeated many of the same poems I had heard before and they were sweeter still for the familiarity.

One of my favorite lines:

"Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

Ahhhhh.

And the music of the Paul Winter Consort carried me on its wide river of sound.

Later in the day, I wrote this.

The musical interludes frame the poetry
like auditory bookends. Or like a long
pull of cool water. I drink in cello
and upright bass, a deep river
where old man carp swims, one lazy
fin flicking as he glides. I am a vessel
made for sound; my mouth opens
and notes pour down my gullet
into the belly beneath.

In a small tent, Ekiwah Adler-Belendez, Kurtis Lamkin, and Brian Turner talk about 'going public with private feelings'. They riff off one another like an old jazz trio. Poetry is an act of courage, alchemy--transmuting pain and anger into beauty.

As the day wears on, I take fewer and fewer notes, unable to listen, feel, process, and write at the same time.

Ko Un takes the stage with a poet translator and a speaking translater. He is from Korea and speaks as if we understood everything he said. And maybe we do. His body language and his voice intonations are so expressive, I connect with him even without a common language.

I listen to him, first in his native tongue, then in translation and I think that my poet friend Gary would love to be sitting here. Beauty and humor twine in short poems and long. And I marvel that he can laugh, having been a political prisioner in his life.

"A thousand drops
hanging from a dead branch.
The rain did not fall for nothing."
--Ko Un

To have heard this man after the morning's Rumi is to feel the soul of 2 poets separated by centuries, culture, and language, joined by spirit.

One of the astounding things about Dodge is that the speakers and performers mill and meander around the huge tents and foodsellers with everyone else. Standing outside the main tent, I find Lori Cotler and Glen Velez. They welcome me into their conversation and I am trying not to gush over how much I enjoyed their performances. I buy two of their CDs and get a photo taken with them, get a hug from Lori.

I plan to attend Billy Collins' talk about the craft of poetry, but I am filled again and return to the hotel to sleep.

I put "Rhythms of Awakening" in my computer and meditate to the thrumming and the drumming and the rising and falling vocals.

When the music is over, darkness had fallen and I was confused again about the passage of time.

Dispatch from Dodge: Friday Sept 29, part 2

After the rain stopped this morning, the sun streamed through gold and amber branches. Just enough to set the ground and the damp benches steaming and to preview winter's chill. A group of musicians from Equador had a stand selling sweaters, ponchos and scarves. I bought a shawl in earth and moss green dyed llama hair. It is soft, light, and warm, like the music they play on multitones pipes and drums.

We sat on the aformentioned (damp) picnic benches eating dinner. Grilled vegetable wrap and sweet potoato fries and the ubiquitous coffee. A poet's favorite drug.

An older couple sits with us; or rather, we invade their space, sit five of us at their picnic table. They are from Virginia and neither teachers nor poets, just a well spoken couple, white haired, retired, who enjoy reading poetry. The husband reads a piece from Linda Pastan about labor and delivery. She had read it earlier this afternoon and I enjoyed his deep voice reading the same words.

We return to the main stage. Inside the great tent envelops us like some yurt constructed of words. There is no cricket singing counterpoint this evening.

Sekou Sundiata's band performs jazz and poetry.

Who knew it would be so exhausting--
this sitting, this listening
with open heart. I struggle
to pick out the words from
the thrumming bass line, chittering
piano notes, distinguish the throb
of drums from my own pulse.
Then I let go and simply hear.
Simply here.


Kurtis Lamkin mesmerizes us with his West African lute/harp--the Kora. He strums it, casually, absently, as he weaves a warp of sound for the weft of words. He takes me on a journey from an African marketplace to a double dutch game on a city street. I feel as if he is whispering in my ear and that it matters to him that I hear it.

I had not heard of Linda Gregg before. I know here words are well crafted. In each piece, a kernal of her authenticity, but she doesn't speak to me. Rather the poems like post card meant for another, land in my mailbox by mistake.

And I end my night with the poetry of Tony Hoagland. He writes between the moments of life's events with unflinching honesty and unflinching humor. It is self-deprecating and biting social commentary.

Perhaps if Philip Levine and Billy Collins had a love child, he would be Tony Hoagland.


Tomorrow is another full day, starting with Coleman Barks reading Rumi with the Paul Winter Consort at 8am. That was a highlight for me from the last Dodge and I don't want to miss it.

More tomorrow from Dodge.

Dispatch from Dodge: Friday September 29, part 1

It poured last night, not long after I left the festival to collapse in my hotel room. It rained all night, a gentle rain, a tentative rain that continued on this morning as I drove back for the morning sessions.

Red fox
neither of us can outrace
the rain

Mark Doty spoke about writing as a laboratory, both for the poet and the reader. He reminds us 'you are full of things to say'. That we must explore what bubbles up and consider why it matters. That a poem is something more than lovely, more than description. That poetry is not always a consoling force.

I love his voice--the way his words on the page are fully and uniquely his.

Billy Collins took the main stage at midmorning. He was greeted like a celebrity, like a rock star.

He reminded us that poetry is a home for ambiguity--a place for complexity, paradox, ambiguity, and uncertainty. That poets "are busy doing nothing."

That poetry is the place where prose reaches its limitations.

He urged us to find the poets we were jealous of. I see him as 'coyote'--in the signature playfulness that is an element of his writing.


In the main tent, poet after poet
sings. My head is thick, I sneeze
into my sleeve. Across the row
Billy Collins sits, his arms folded.
After he speaks, he sits back
down looking bored. He rarely
smiles now, though he is playful
as an otter on stage.
During the applause for someone else,
he ducks under the tent flap
taking his poems with him
like the Cheshire cat and his smile.

More later. I am meeting Laurie Byro and her poet friend Maggie Brown for dinner.