Tomales Bay morning 1: in Dana Levin's Workshop

This morning, I sat in on Dana Levin's poetry workshop.

Dana Levin emphasized the importance of keeping the self-doubting ego at bay. We talked about how we should avoid self-defining, or defining the thing we're writing, or naming it (limiting it) before we allow it to sufficiently unfold for us.

Levin reminded us of Ezra Pound's idea that artists are the antennae of the human race, that artists (writers) speak on the edges of transformation and experience, that we are sensitive to signals (individual, cultural) before the rest of the population is.

We also discussed how poems--effective poems--reintroduce us to things we already know about--and things we don't know we know.

This afternoon we are hearing Levin, Mary Gaitskill and Jess Walter speak on the narrative, the associative and the lyrical modes. More on that--and photos--later!