In Seamus Heaney’s long poem sequence “Station Island,” the speaker, on a pilgrimage, is visited by ghosts who rebuke him in an almost Dickensian fashion. “Part XII”, the final poem of the sequence, rouses me like a bugle call: Then I knew him in the flesh out there on the tarmac among the cars, wintered …
I first encountered Seamus Heaney in person during my undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley. I had originally been admitted to the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science double-major program, having won two of the university’s most prestigious scholarships, been introduced to the Chancellor, assigned a high-ranking advisor from the Engineering faculty, and generally been welcomed to …
I stuffed some peppermint tea bags into the percolator, along with a single-pot coffee pouch, and stirred chocolate instant breakfast into the result. Armed with this variant of mint mocha, and the esoteric knowledge passed on by a friendly maintenance guy, I have bypassed the timer on the fireplace, and am watching the waves from …
After his craft talk this morning, I am convinced that, if he wanted to, Marvin Bell could levitate a space ship with his mind. He used the alphabet (why not?) as a framework for rattling off his abecedarian thoughts on poetry, nugget after nugget of invigorating advice interspersed with his own quirky humor. He read …
“You just go on your nerve.” -Frank O’Hara, “Personism” Dorianne Laux took a pin to our significant, pastoral, first-person confessional, lyrical, serious, West-coast bubble with a great talk on Frank O’Hara. She read several of his poems and traced the influence of finding universality in absurdity through to such contemporary poets as Tony Hoagland and …
Last year, during the Winter residency, we had snow on the beach. This year, the wind is driving fine sand over the dunes in silky rivulets. Apologies for the shaky camera work. It is really blowing out there. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Px_tGL5lM] Click here to watch the video.
