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Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. ÌýHere and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognizable deed.

–G. Eliot, Middlemarch

Bay Area peeps: take my poetry workshop at theÌý in July/August!

More info , please forward widely.

Instructor: Laura Goode

Contact: [email protected]

Number of Sessions: 6

Meeting times: Wednesday evenings July 13,Ìý 27, and August 3, 10, 17, and 24 (skipping July 20 for Laura's book party!)

Course fee: $350, with $100 deposit to reserve space in the class.

Description: "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems,/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there." –W.C. Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"

What does the reader find in a poem; conversely, what does the poet find in writing it? What must be found in order to create a new poem?Ìý What constitutes a "found" poem?Ìý This six-week poetry intensive will embolden students to find poetic matter in the most mundane or unexpected places: in transit, in the home, in minutiae and detritus. Writing exercises will focus on locating inspiration in routine places, creating new poetic language from existing source texts, and utilizing formal constraints to liberate, not restrict, poetic invention. We will also examine various resources for getting your poems published and discuss other venues (reading series, teaching opportunities, other poets) for poetic engagement.Ìý We will read and write hungrily; our coterie will be small and intimate.

Poets of all ages, experience levels, and backgrounds are very welcome.Ìý Please send me your favorite poem by yourself and your favorite poem by someone else with your registration; this is purely for my edification and will not determine your admission to the class.

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To drill one hole after another into [language] until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through � I cannot imagine a higher goal for today's writer.

–S. Beckett, Letters

It was at Thanksgiving time that Francie told her first organized lie, was found out and determined to become a writer.

–B. Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Recognition, as in fact the term indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, disclosing either a close relationship or enmity, on the part of people marked out for good or bad fortune.Ìý Recognition is best when it occurs simultaneously with a reversal, like the one in the Oedipus.

–A°ù¾±²õ³Ù´Ç³Ù±ô±ð, Poetics

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One evening, half my life ago, I was standing at work.Ìý I think I was a hostess at the Fenway Motor Inn in Cambridge.Ìý I was wearing this two-piece check maxi suit–it was in the 70s.Ìý I was watching boats go down the river.Ìý The window in front of me was like a page and I was writing in a spiral notebook and I got this idea: I drew a sad woman's face and I wrote what she was thinking and I thought, why can't I be famous right now.Ìý Why can't I just act that way.Ìý Why can't I record everything down like my life counts, like I'm the Queen of England or Bobby Vee, and that way I can be safe and not have to wait to die to be important.Ìý Why can't I live right now.Ìý Because I am not rich, I am not a saint.Ìý But I do know this: not all of us were sent here to work.

–EileenÌýMyles,ÌýCoolÌýforÌýYou

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