Yes, there will be a blog for today.
Peggy’s hour was filled up with questionaires.
David gave us an assignment for August: make it into a writing month. Let your memories of the Festival awaken you. He also gave us an exercise for August: while out and about pick out an object. It can be as large as a landscape or a store or as small as a single detail. Consider how that object will be described by characters in different states of mind. He also recommended three books/writers: anything by Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Beloved, and Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury. He talked about point of view–whose head are you inside? Are you in a close or tight POV where you reveal only what that character is aware of? Or are you more distant. 
Finally, as an exercise, he handed around what was originally an angel figurine from the transfer station (the class had to explain this for those from out of town–the transfer station is the point to which we haul our trash, but it has a platform for potentially reusable items.) Don took photos of the painted angel, and I’ll post one when he sends it. I’ll also take a digital photo of the recycling platform at the transfer station closest to my house. For more on POV, look at this.
Jeanne, help! My notebook is blank for your section. I think we read our letter poems.
I think all of our authors contributed to this list of books on the craft of writing:
Addonizio, Kim and Dorianne Laux. The Poet’s Companion: a Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. New York, NY W.W. Norton, 1997
Addonizio, Kim. Ordinary Genius: a Guide for the Poet Within. Neew York, NY, W.W. Norton, 2009.
Behn, Robin, and Chase Twitchell, eds. The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach. New York, NY: Harper 1992
Bernays, Anne , and Pamela Painter. What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers. 3rd Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Longman 2009
Blythe, Will, ed. Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction. New York, NY: Back Bay Books, 1999.
Gerard, Philip, ed. Writing Creative Nonfiction. Cincinnati, OH, Story Press 2001.
Gerard, Philip, ed. Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life. Cincinnati, OH: Story Press, 2004.
Hugo, Richard. The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing. New York, NY W.W. Norton, 2007.
Kooser, Ted. The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets. Lincoln,NE; Bison Books 2007.
Kowit, Steve. In the Palm of Yolur Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House, 1995.
Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1995.
Miller, Brenda and Suzanne Paola. Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction. New Nork, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2004
Moore, Dinty W. Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction. Cincinnati,OH: Writer’s Digest Books 2010.
Rilke. Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York, NY; Vintage Books, 1996.
Root, Robert L. and Michael J. Steinberg. The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Longman, 2009
Singer, Daniel, ed. Views from the Loft: A Portable Writer’s Workshop. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2010.
Teachers & Writers Collaborative Books http://www.twc.org
The “Art of” series by Graywolf Press http://www.graywolfpress.org (click on “creative writing” link)
Wooldridge, Susan. Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words. New York NY: Clarkson Potter 1997.
In the afternoon we each read out something that had moved us or that we had written. Please post your original work you read or the name and author you read as comments. And don’t hesitate to continue posting comments. You can always find the Summer Festival section either by going to July 2010 or by clicking on “writing” and selecting “Summer Festival.” To get to the first two blogs on the Festival, click on “earlier entries.”
P.s.–if you want to edit your work, post the edited version and ask me (at the e-mail address on the sheet Peggy handed around) to remove the old one.
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'Homecoming' Blog 
Thanks beyond words to everyone in our workshop. And special thanks to Peggy for making all this happen each year. So many extraordinary moments stand out to me, on and off the page. As I’m packed & ready to head back to my little orchard and my pooches, I am already looking forward to what comes next for each of us from our time together.
Jeanne
I want to second this thank you – to everyone – and to Peggy in particular. And to wish for all of us that we stay connected, keep writing, and stay inspired.
I’m toast today, so haven’t finished the piece about David’s Transfer Station Angel, but maybe in the next few days…
But here’s what I shared in the circle yesterday:
I’ve been loving Kay Ryan’s poetry lately, was immersed in it for a few weeks before coming to Fairbanks. I love the understated intensity of it, and I love the music, rhythm and rhyme and their freedom.
Here’s a poem of hers as an example:
Sharks’ Teeth
Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark’s-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.
Then I shared about my excruciation, my ferment of confused excitement, when I was at a poetry reading and thought someone in the audience looked awfully like Kay Ryan (known to me only from photos online) – what should I ‘do’ about it, etc? Was calmed down by my husband, agreed that it was terribly unlikely… and then shaken up the next day when a friend said she’d heard that Kay Ryan was here and was going to do a reading!
And here’s the first draft, that I’d just started work on before coming up here and being lusciously distracted, attempting to describe this turmoil in a ‘Ryan-esque’ way:
Kay Ryan, was it really you?
Acres of words, uniquely juxtaposed,
are the grounds for contact -the source’s
face and physicality seem to come after
the fact. But then, when
you think you have a sighting,
the pique of uncertainty,
the unlikeness of photographs,
paralyze. Possible scenarios
of encounter occur, appear
impossible – you realize
you are, after all, strangers.
Thanks to everyone of you … fellow students, teachers and special guests, for making this first, hopefully first of many, conferences such a special experience.
This is from David’s last session.
The Pain of White
Amongst the hierarchy of angels
we know only the white,
and forget the truth of this,
the near eternity
of heartache suffered
to gain
such sacred countenance.
Remembering that white,
by nature, impure,
the presence of all colors,
and that one cannot move
from black to there
without living
every exquisite hue
known to the universe.
Knowing the host
is still gathering, striving for that day
of holy transformation.