LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: Poetry by the Sea

  • Poetry and the archives by the sea

    A lot of poets write from research, and there are myriad ways to explain why. Just a few of the reasons, for me: because the past presses at me as a citizen and as a human being. Because my particular history–of my current region or my ancestors–needs puzzling through. Because I want to look outward…

  • What I did not tweet from Poetry by the Sea

    Almost passed out during Claire Rossini’s poem about dissecting an albino squirrel What percentage of poets would absolutely love their reading to knock an audience member unconscious? Seymour Lipset via Claire Rossini: Those who know only one country know no country Dolores Hayden: All but death can be adjusted Meena Alexander: We have poetry so…

  • Intertidal zone

    I’m currently reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s flood of a novel, New York 2140, at the edges of the work day. Sea levels have risen fifty feet but stubborn New Yorkers are trying to redefine their big moldy apple as SuperVenice, navigating the street-canals via vaporettos and hydrofoils. When you read a long book slowly, it seeps into…

  • Boarding around and some valentines

    “Barding around” was Frost’s way of describing a poet’s itinerant life, giving readings anywhere and everywhere for your supper. “Boarding around” is the variation on Frost’s phrase that’s been running through my head lately. I’m the chair of the Mid-Atlantic Program Directors’ Caucus for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, which means attending the…

  • Poetry by the Sea, Pt. 2: Seams showing

    “I’ve quit hoarding,” Kimiko Hahn said at her reading, “and now collect myself.” I, on the other hand, was hoarding good lines–hers was one of many I collected last week in a little notebook bound with blue thread. My tattered Moleskin is beginning to fill with quotes and drafts and lists and spiral doodles–and I…

  • Poetry by the Sea, Pt. 1: Edna Rules

    “Edna rules!” a woman declared to me in the hotel hallway, waving a vigorous fist. “I mean, Vincent!” I organized a panel  on Edna St. Vincent Millay for Poetry by the Sea, an annual writing conference in Madison, Connecticut. The other speakers were Anna Lena Phillips Bell speaking about Millay as an ecopoet; January Gill…

  • Toasting successes, fleeing gnats

    Even though I’m not teaching this year, I can SMELL that it’s the last week of classes. The campus, lush from an unusually rainy May, is full of giddy, jittery, sneezing students. My colleagues are staggering around exhausted, arms full of ungraded papers. Processing my heavy email load is like trying to get free of…

  • So many mountains

    I am very glad I attended “Writing the Rockies” to discuss poetry and place with Anna Lena Phillips Bell, Tom Cable, Corinna McClanahan Schroeder, and many others. Getting there and back involved three flights each way, as well as some mild altitude sickness and a chagrined recognition that I’m too bad at sleeping in the…