Bennington June 08

Marines' Hymn

2008-11-09T07:12:00.001-08:00

From the halls of Montezuma,
To the shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country's battles
In the air, on land, and sea;
First to fight for right and freedom
And to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title
Of United States Marine.

Our flag's unfurled to every breeze
From the dawn to setting sun;
We have fought in every clime and place
Where we could take a gun;
In the snow of far-off northern lands
And in sunny tropic scenes;
You will find us always on the job
The United States Marines.

Here's health to you and to our Corps
Which we are proud to serve;
In many a strife we've fought for life
And have never lost our nerve;
If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven's scenes;
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines.

Info on the Marines' Hymn

Invite

2008-09-05T12:33:00.001-07:00

Stephen invites everyone in the June 2008 class down to Argentina for an asado.

Missing Bennington

2008-08-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

Stephen misses Bennington, but not the beds:

Happy Graduation, Everyone!

2008-07-14T04:05:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

Poetry
by Sabre, age 5

Rain falls down
on the ground

Wet!

Mommy carries her
kids under the
umbrella.

Dry!

April 22nd is Earthday

2008-04-21T12:25:00.000-07:00

here is an appropriate poem:

The River's Heart
by Maya, 4th Grade

The waves of a calm river
Bashing the deep sea green
Hugging the shore and the trees
The leaves whispering
Into the water
Its fast-rushing waves
Dashing to the waterfall
Seaweed draping the river's floor
And the splashing of its heart
Splish, splash, splash.

Check out this site for Earthday info:
http://earthday.envirolink.org/

To All Benny June 08's

2008-04-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

i just wanted to share something an alumnus shared with me.

print-out your lecture and final reading material in 14 font or larger, so it is easier to read on the podium.

stephen page

For Thomas Jefferson's Birthday

2008-04-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

. . . Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater
happiness hereafter --with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens -- a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities . . .

-Thomas Jefferson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

Interview with Katie Rauk

2008-03-29T05:14:00.000-07:00

Katie Rauk On Writing and Teaching

http://www.indy.com/posts/163

Poem for the Equinox

2008-03-21T07:07:00.000-07:00

On Fields O'er Which the Reaper's Hand has Passed

On fields o'er which the reaper's hand has pass'd
Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun,
My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind
And of such fineness as (March) airs,
There after harvest could I glean my life
A richer harvest reaping without toil,
And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will
In subtler webs than finest summer haze.

By: Henry David Thoreau

Bennington Review June 2008

2008-02-28T13:18:00.000-08:00

Here are the guidelines I've drawn up for this semester's Bennington Review, so please read them carefully and make sure to mark your calendars with the below dates as deadlines are critical when doing a project such as this.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE TO GENRE EDITORS: March 30.

Genre Editors, all work must be camera ready, proofed, and sent to me NO LATER THAN APRIL 15. I will need the work sent in ONE file attachment (Word or RTF attachment). Each page should have the title of the piece, the author's name, and bio. Upon receipt, galleys will be emailed back to you to send to your group for final proof approval. Details on this will follow at the time nears.

HOW TO SUBMIT:

POETRY: Send 3 poems max to your genre editor(s).

PROSE: Send one longer piece (1500 words max) OR up to 3 flash pieces (1500 max total) to your genre editor.

BIOS: Please include a brief (50-75 words) contributor's note with your submissions, listing publication credits, awards, etc., if applicable.

Genre editors, please send an email to your group listing your submission needs (format, file attachment, etc.). I advise against pasting material into an email as format, italics, etc. are often lost.

ART: I will need all art/photography submissions by March 25. Please send these to me as a high-resolution (300 dpi or higher) image, preferably as a JPG attachment. Please only submit 2 pieces per person. I ask that these images not be circulated via mass email because some people don't want their boxes clogged up. I will get with the genre editors with the images and we will select the top 3, then send those to the rest of you in one email to vote on. We will not be using images inside the BR as it is exceedingly costly to do so. Images will be given priority on how they are able to translate to the cover of the BR. Please consider this when sending your image. Color is preferred. If you are submitting an image that includes a person, please make sure you get a model release signature.

Please note that if you are submitting previously published material, you must own the rights to do so and/or have reprint permission from the journal/magazine/newspaper. If the work is previously published, please make note with your submission.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Linus for President

2008-02-18T02:01:00.000-08:00

Funny Valentines

2008-02-14T05:14:00.000-08:00

SONNET 130

By William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Graduation

2008-02-06T07:45:00.000-08:00

hey all,

i think kimberly h's idea of a traditional graduation ceremony is perfect. we also have room, i think, to fit in the slide-show idea, somehow. if not, have the slide-show during the dinner, or dance, or anything else after.

i want our graduation to go well and be a grand rememberence. i am here on this end of the e world to have ideas bounced off me and to support the majority decision about everything.

here's to you all and me, that we have productive last semester, great readings and lectures, and a memorable graduation.

stephen page

PLR Fall/Winter 2007 Now Online!

2008-01-22T21:42:00.000-08:00

The Fall/Winter 2007 issue of Pebble Lake Review is now online!

In this issue: Poetry from Michelle Bitting Abrams, Hanna Andrews, Jean Gallagher, Alex Lemon, Laura McCullough, Simone Muench, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Lia Purpura, Tony Trigilio, David Ray Vance, and others. Fiction by Elisabeth Benjamin, Kim Chinquee, William Conescu, Glen Shaheen and Matt Siegel . Nonfiction from Blake Butler, James Hall, Jessica Handler, and Margaret MacInnis' interview with poet Lia Purpura.

Plus reviews of A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight by Hadara Bar-nadav, Gold Star Road by Richard Hoffman, Lucky Wreck by Ada Limón, and Modern Life by Matthea Harvey.

We are currently reading for our Spring 2008 issue, which will be released in late April. We will start reading for our first-ever theme issue (Illness and Health) beginning Feb.1. See website for details.

January 08 Photo Slideshow

2008-01-16T11:44:00.001-08:00

Party Hardy for the New Year!

2007-12-29T21:07:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

2007-12-29T21:05:00.000-08:00

Snow in Vermont

2007-12-29T21:03:00.000-08:00

Your Mind At the End of a Semester (clic on pic)

2007-12-29T04:01:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

Santa's Freud

2007-12-24T21:21:00.000-08:00

A Rabbit Stickup

2007-12-24T07:02:00.000-08:00

Rudolph's Revenge

2007-12-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

Santa Hit by a Plane

2007-12-24T06:46:00.000-08:00

Funeral for a Friend

2007-12-24T06:42:00.000-08:00

Not a Happy Snowman (click on pic)

2007-12-23T16:25:00.000-08:00

Snowman Heart

2007-12-23T16:17:00.000-08:00

Intruder Shot

2007-12-23T09:11:00.000-08:00

A Santa Flat

2007-12-22T11:48:00.000-08:00

How is Your Penmanship?

2007-12-19T11:21:00.000-08:00

How Do You Feel?

2007-12-18T13:03:00.000-08:00

john ciardi, on 'how does a poem mean?'

2007-12-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

"one does not take a poem apart for the love of dissection but only in order to put it back together more meaningfully."

Can Writing be Taught?

2007-12-15T06:59:00.000-08:00

http://download.guardian.co.uk/sys-audio/Books/Books/2006/10/25/PEN1.mp3

On Genres

2007-12-13T09:38:00.000-08:00

"There is no distinct edge between art forms, between the artists' works and lives, between one artist's work and another artist's work. Artists connect people to each other, people to the earth, the present to the past and future." W.A. Reed

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-12-12T19:48:00.000-08:00

Gestate: A Short Story by Erica Plouffe Lazure

2007-11-19T10:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.newsobserver.com/lifestyles/books/story/752035.html

Levitating Bennington Student News with Erica Lazure

2007-11-10T05:27:00.000-08:00

listen to this,

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/whqr/local-whqr-646730.mp3

and read here:

http://www.ecu.edu/cs-admin/news/humor-laugh-page.cfm

GREENVILLE, NC (2007-11-07)
On Wednesday's this month, WHQR News pulls back the curtain a bit to reveal the lighter side of the news team through stories from the newsroom's wish list. We start off our series with an audio postcard from a very unique conference.

What kind of academic conference includes a mass cream pie toss?
If that sounds like the set up to a bad joke, you're not far off -- it's the first ever HumorFest at East Carolina University in Greenville.
When WHQR stopped by last week, we found one woman working harder than anyone to get a laugh: Erica Plouffe Lazure is the co-creator of the National Laugh Registry, an on-line archive of recorded guffaws and giggles.
But in order to obtain her ha-has, Lazure first had to get people to do something surprisingly difficult: laugh naturally into her microphone.
*****

You can find the National Laugh Registry here. http://www.ecu.edu/cs-admin/news/humor-laugh-page.cfm

*****

Valentine

2007-11-04T23:48:00.000-08:00

Ms. Jean Valentine rocks it out on Poetry Daily. See her two poems here.

I've received several emails from this class recently about prof picks. I've been tied up with a cold, family disasters, and completing my manuscript (yipee!). I will email ASAP this week. I'm not avoiding anyone, just stressed and busy!

A - B - C

2007-10-31T19:40:00.000-07:00

posted with permission of Celeste Fremon

For Liam - Birds and Watchers

2007-10-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

by Ian Williams
(posted by his permission)

Liam Rector, Director of the MFA writing program at Bennington College, killed himself on August 15th, 2007. He had a profound effect on many people, a lot of whom, I suspect, he scarcely knew. People like me, who came to the program, were changed by it, and are being changed by it. He was a straight talker. I remember a metaphor he used when welcoming the first semester class. He said that there are two kinds of writers; birds and bird watchers, and that the class will learn how to be both during its time at Bennington. I wrote this short skit early in August with the idea of sending it to him – he beat me to it..

So, there’s birds and bird watchers. Me? I’m a bird. Not exactly an eagle or a peregrine falcon, but definitely a bird. Maybe a robin or a thrush, perhaps even a flicker. Yeah, a flicker, with a bit of yellow journalism and a splash of red passion thrown in. Now, I may not be the best flyer, might have missed the bird feeder a couple of times. Maybe my landings are not all they could be, but at least I’m up there, flying. Flyin’s not so easy you know. You’re there, out on a limb, as it were, with nothing but nothing beneath you. Takes moxie I think. Whydya think chickens don’t fly? Same as why they cross the road. Me, I gotta lot of respect for them as flies. I mean, they’re putting themselves out there. They could hit a lamp post or fly into a window, especially if they’ve been at the fermented berries, know what I mean? And you gotta be fit. I can tell you there’s no fat birds flyin. How often have you see an oven stuffer roaster soaring through the glen? Plus, you gotta keep the old feathers neat and oiled, can’t just hop off the branch without preening. Now, I’m not proud, not like them bleedin peacocks, but my feathers is always nicely turned out – that takes time and energy, most definitely. Course, you gotta give it to them raptors. Those buggers can drop outa nowhere and ruin your whole afternoon. But you gotta hand it to ‘em, they got speed and coordination, and big beaks, come to that.

Now bird watching; I mean, stone the crows. We all like to watch, know what I mean, know what I mean? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, but can you imagine, just sitting there, watching others fly? If that isn’t sad enough, those turkeys have the gizzard to criticize them as flies. I mean, I’d like to see some of them hop off a branch now and again, just to see how they do. I don’t want to put the cat amongst the pigeons but this is not simply a case of the chicken and the egg. Without us fliers around there would be nothing for them to watch. In fact, they’d be dead as dodos. But what really sticks in my craw is that these bleedin voyeurs get paid for watching! Can you imagine? Gettin paid for takin the piss out of them as flies. I mean, that’s just not right. You try gettin paid for flying, ha! Peck your entrails out – it ain’t gonna happen, ‘less of course you’re a known flier, being a known flier is like havin a bird in the hand, as it were. And it’s not as if these peepers work hard. For instance, I heard about this watcher that said a sparrow flew as bad as a chickadee. Jeez – that’s killin two birds with one stone.

But, when its all said and done, and the chickens have come ‘ome to roost, I glad I’m a flier. I just gotta watch out for them bleedin lamp posts.

LIAM RECTOR: 1949-2007 - Always Be Closing

2007-10-26T17:03:00.000-07:00

by Celeste Fremon
posted with her permission

link here: http://witnessla.com/literature/2007/admin/liam-rector-1949-2007-always-be-c
losing/

and here: http://WitnessLA.com

LIAM RECTOR: 1949-2007 - Always Be Closing

August 16th, 2007 by Celeste Fremon

Late Wednesday night I heard that the poet, Liam Rector, killed himself earlier in the day. He used a shotgun. His wife Tree Swenson was asleep in the next room.

Liam was bearded, bear-like, quirky, with an extravagant, super-size-it personality. A person about whom everyone whispered, most times with overwhelming affection, other times…well, let’s just say he was an easy target for gossip because he said what he thought—good, bad, and occasionally truly strange. He wanted to provoke comment—and he did. Inevitably. Gleefully.

He was also brilliant, and had enough energy to light two medium-sized cities. Professionally, Liam was a prizewinning poet, who had taught at Columbia, The New School and Emerson College in Boston. He’d also been the executive director of the National Endowment for the Arts, and for the American Academy of Poets.

I met him only recently in the context of the Graduate Writing Seminars at Bennington College which Liam founded and directed. I’d heard about the program from my friend Aimee Liu, the novelist and nonfiction writer, who’d just finished getting her masters degree there. She said she loved the whole two years, that the faculty was stellar, and that she really believed it had kicked her writing up a notch or three. I should just do it, she said. Go. Figure a way.

So, I applied…at my age….(after decades of professional writing and reporting—and, for the past few years, teaching)! Oh, what the hell? I thought. I wanted somebody else to kick my butt, creatively speaking, the way I was doing for my students. I needed to be pushed out of my comfort zone again. I was working on a book anyway, and I hoped to do what Amy had done—shove my writing up a notch or three.

Bennington was the only place I considered. Although the Liam-created MFA program had the reputation for being rigorous, it was also what is called a “low-residency.”. This means you do most of your work through monthly packets exchanged via snail mail with a series of advisors—combined with a ridiculous amount of reading. And then, twice a year, the Bennington people make you show up on campus for ten days—once in the winter, once in the spring.
My first residency was this past June. I flew to Bennington, Vermont, to stay in a drafty, white clapboard dorm, featuring lumpy pillows, dinner napkin-sized bath towels, and showers down the hall. I shared dorm life with 29 or so other poets, novelists, and nonfiction writers—ages 21 to 62. Our newby group included additional So Cal types like novelist, Tod Goldberg, his fiction-writing wife, Wendy Duren, and actor/writer, Rider Strong. Plus there were the returning writers, there for their second, third and fourth residency. For ten days the lot of us did nothing but eat, drink, and breathe literature and writing —all as orchestrated by Liam Rector.

It was glorious.

I particularly remember how, at our introductory meeting with Liam, at one point he roared to us that it was essential for all writers to watch the “Always be closing” scene from David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross —the movie version. And so, off went the lights and we dutifully watched the scene in which the Alec Baldwin character browbeats his already psychically battered salesmen in order to inculcate them with idea that they must “always be closing.”

I took it to mean: Never save your best for later. Give every shred of what you’ve got right now. Take no prisoners. Employ all three of the aforementioned as often as humanly possible, or don’t f*cking bother!
Liam told us that Mamet wrote the scene as a new element for the movie, that it wasn’t in the play. This literary factoid was precisely the kind of thing Liam made it a point to know.

And if he knew it—whatever it was— he usually wanted us to know it too.

A-B-C. Always be closing.

It was a maxim that Liam seemed to practice as well as preach, at least when I saw him. It is in the tenor of his poetry—which is beautifully crafted, to be sure, yet also swing-out-over-the-abyss risky when it comes to content.

And I think you can reasonably say there is a strong core of ABC undergirding the kick-ass wonderful Bennington program that Liam founded, of which I am now a part.
The last memory I have was of asking Liam to dance at the party held the night before we were all scheduled to go home. My east coast writer friend, Nancy Doherty, asked him too. Mind you, in this instance, we were talking boogie-on-down dancing, not ballroom. (There was a great deal of Pinot Noir involved, as I remember—at least at our table.) He was gallant in his refusal to both of us. Evidently, even for Liam, A-B-C had its limits.

There will likely be those who read this who knew Liam a zillion times better than I do. (Like I said, I was a new kid to the fold.) If so, please leave a comment , a memory, or a story.

In the meantime…..Rest in Peace, Liam.
And…yes….A-B-C. Got it. Will do. In your honor.
***********************************************************************************

Here are few of Liam’s poems.

Whether you’re a poetry aficionado or not, they’re worth reading—particularly the first and the last.
The Remarkable Objectivity
of Your Old Friends
by Liam Rector
We did right by your death and went out,
Right away, to a public place to drink,
To be with each other, to face it.
We called other friends - the ones
Your mother hadn’t called - and told them
What you had decided, and some said
What you did was right; it was the thing
You wanted and we’d just have to live
With that, that your life had been one
Long misery and they could see why you
Had chosen that, no matter what any of us
Thought about it, and anyway, one said,
Most of us abandoned each other a long
Time ago and we’d have to face that
If we had any hope of getting it right.

Best Friend
by Liam Rector
You sailed down
From Provincetown
And I was to meet you
In Key West. I’d never
Sailed. I dressed
In my best and flew
Down from Manhattan,
Where I had been feeling
Punishing failure
And reading Hart Crane.
I brought a robe
I intended to wear
When I jumped off
Our boat mid-sea. I never
Told you that,
Old friend, and I
Apologize now.
What if I had left you mid-ocean
To sail alone?
In our twenty-foot wooden
Thing with no motor
And a radio that didn’t
Work we barely made it
Through the initial storm.
In the Bahamas we
Were often stood
Free beers for being
As insane as we were,
Coming over those waters
With no motor, pure
Sailing like that, a bar
Of soap floating in the cauldron
Of the Bermuda Triangle,
Where motorized cigarette
Boats sped by at money-making
Speeds, running drugs to fill
American needs.
And on our way back
When we lost our rudder
You, former Eagle
Scout, first conscientious
Objector ever to leave
West Point, captain
Of the ski team, jumped
Over the stern
And fashioned out of oar
And thick rope the thing
That would see us to shore
Before we, becalmed,
Drifted off course
100 miles, 100 miles
Of boredom and sun. I snapped
A black and white photo
Of the sea to remind me
Of my boredom, its boredom.
We made it back
To America, hitting
Shore at Boca Raton,
Pulling in midst the boats
Of the very, very rich.
I lived to write this
And never jumped ship.
It was your kinship
Kept me going those years,
Times of ridiculous
Sailing, riotous beers.
Wives sailed by,
So many boats, and you soon
Left for Bangkok and its
Very distant coast.
Being young: being rich
Among inherited ruins.
Always
by Liam Rector
She liked to get high and go away.
She liked to get very high and go
Very far away. She would say
She was going to meet us
But then she wouldn’t show up:
She’d gone very far away.
She knew it probably wasn’t
The best thing to live this way but
She said she felt so much better
Whenever she stationed herself somewhere
Very far away, indeed as far away
As she could get from the bitter.
We begged her to stay, to stay and to stay
And to stay, and she took to mumbling
Something by Beckett, “Better abort
Than be barren, ” and then she’d go
Even farther away. She said she’d
Finally reached the point, after
Her husband died early and their daughter
Lost her mind, she’d finally reached the point
Where she’d just as soon
Go really far away. This was the point
Where we were getting intolerably tired
Of her turmoil (it was beginning
To involve money) and we threatened,
Ourselves, to go away.
Then she said she could easily see how
We’d reached this point, why we were
Beginning to feel that way, and she
Leaned into us to say she’d learned
Somewhere along the way
That abandonment, one way
Or the other, that abandonment
Was the very mathematic of matter,
That abandonment, like it
Or not, really was the only way.
She said NO ONE GETS TO STAY.
And then she started rehearsing the story,
The story about being born,
Coming to fruition, and then having
To go away, and she said we’d really
Have to come to terms with this, that this
Was the way things went always, and as we
Started putting our coats on to leave she said
She wanted to thank us, that she’d been
Surprised and delighted, really surprised
And delighted, by just how long we had
Managed to stay. And when the call came
We decided the only way to put it,
The only way really to respond
To the “Why?” of it, was to say
She’d been walking along a precipice
For a very long time
And that she had slipped and managed
To go on over, and that was all,
About her going, that any of us
Could ever really say.
So We’ll Go No More
So it’s fare thee well, my own true love;
I’m leaving you behind. And not
For the early, for the young reasons, but
For these late, last, ill reasons. I’m almost
Kaput! Yea, you’ll get no more of me….
Cancer, heart attack, bypass—all
In the same year? My chances
Are one out of two! And I’m fucking well
Ready, ready to go. To go!—how often
I’ve operated that way. That way
Almost the entire caper, the way
For people, places, things:
Abandon, abandon, nay abandon before
Being abandoned. But we’ve, we’ve
Stayed. You the third wife for me, I
The second such boy for you, and I love
Looking directly into you, as we look
Directly into this last get-go. We all
Have the talent for leaving, like it
Or no. And oh, how rich it is, how fine
To finally inherit!: the final thing
I was looking for, as it turns out,
The great power of leaving
All the breathtakingly brief all along.

Liam Rector

David Gates article on Liam

2007-10-21T12:44:00.000-07:00

Here is the new link to the David Gates article on Liam.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/42700

Thank you, Leigh Kohnle, who first sent it to me.

Liam Memorial Service: A Jules Nyquist Rendition

2007-10-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

(This post is by permission of Jules Nyquist. read her blog at: http://autobiographyofturquoise.blogspot.com/)

The first thing that struck me was the shoes. Liam's shoes, 8 to 10 pairs, maybe, all across the steps of the altar, lit with candles. Would they catch on fire? He was there in that spooky presence of his, but not there. Some of us half-expected him to come in to say this was a cruel joke, but of course it wasn't.

After being forced to wait until 15 minutes before the service to get in, the ushers finally relented. Why they did this I don't know, maybe they were lighting candles. It was raining lightly, there was a bit of a downpour earlier in the day. In line I talked to several classmates and instructors.

Friends and family spoke:

Tree - "It wasn't depression. It wasn't a whim." Liam lived life in quality versus quantity. Poetry was "the third thing" between them. They were married 16 years. The last night of his life he donned a tuxedo with a polo shirt, they had a nice dinner, he asked her to dance. Did she know he was planning this? She didn't say. She seemed composed. I'm wondering how she will be a few months from now.

Virginia Rector - Liam's daughter from another marriage, age 23. She also looked composed and read from a prepared script. She says she never got to say goodbye. She quoted a line Liam always said (and that I remember from Bennington as well) "Life's not fair."

Tree and Liam were married in Donald Hall's backyard, before Jane Kenyon was sick. Black ties and red sneakers.

Donald Hall spoke, sitting in a chair instead of the podium. He couldn't read anything prepared, he just talked, he sounded upset. He and Liam wrote letters back and forth via mail. Three of them came after his death. Movies, clothes, shoes. One time Liam made a list for Donald of "85 suggestions of the duties of Poet Laureate."

Jerry Winestone - Liam lived his life his way. (Did suicide give him control? Probably.)

Ed Ochester was stuck in the Pittsburgh airport. I found out later there was a bomb threat and the whole airport was closed down. Some kid with a circuit board around his neck as an art statement?

Bob Shacochis - Bob, thank you for being honest. No sentiment from you, as usual. You are angry he left us, we are all angry and you put it out there to admit what everyone else was avoiding. You wrote a letter to Tree. You always were one of my favorite Bennington instructors, because you have a sarcastic, skeptical, witty view of life, and don't take shit from anyone. And you're not taking it from Liam now, either. Liam had the song "Mashed Potatoes" playing on his computer at his desk when he shot himself. Was that a hint for the poem "Gravy" by Raymond Carver? You talked to Tree about this. A clue left behind. I have trouble believing that Liam would 'stage' something to leave clues as to the motive behind his death, besides his suicide note. I don't know him well enough for that.

The poem "Gravy" was published in the New Yorker three weeks after Raymond Carver's death at 50 in 1988. I see the similarities here, I don't know what Liam thought of Carver but I'm sure he was an influence. Liam survived his 20% chance to live in the battle for colon cancer and added a few more years. That is, until he decided life wasn't worth living due to more health-related issues.

Gravy

by Raymond Carver

No other word will do. For that's what it was.

Gravy.

Gravy, these past ten years.

Alive, sober, working, loving, and

being loved by a good woman.

Eleven years

ago he was told he had six months to live

at the rate he was going. And he was going

nowhere but down. So he changed his ways

somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?

After that it was all gravy, every minute

of it, up to and including when he was told about,

well, some things that were breaking down and

building up inside his head. "Don't weep for me,"

he said to his friends. "I'm a lucky man.

I've had ten years longer than I or anyone

expected. Pure Gravy. And don't forget it."

Sven Birkets - also addressed the anger. "Friends don't do this." I agree. No goodbyes, no warnings. Sven mentioned James Dickey's poem "Lord let me die, but not die out." I was enamored with Dickey's poetry as an undergraduate student, the way he wrote about nature and memory. Sven, you will carry us on as acting director of the life of letters.

Others spoke. Jill McKorkle, Amyl Hempel, Tom Sleigh, Linda Gregg, Martha Cooley, Jason Shinder, Elizabeth Wray, Matthew Graham, Victoria Clausi, Lucie Brock-Broido, David Fenza. Two hours later, Askold Melnyczuk showed a group of slides on St. Mark's white wall on the altar. Above the shoes. Titled "American Prodigal #6". Liam's baby and childhood photos, his wife, daughter, with Tree. The full frontal nudity shot thrown in for good measure. Liam's birth name was Ron, he changed it to Liam.

David Broza performed "In Snow" (Liam's poem and music by David) on guitar, and sang. A fitting ending.

Afterwards, the church lights stayed dark, we got up, talked, moved to the outside patio area with water (no drinks, no toasting). A Bennington reunion, in a bit, this sad occasion that has brought us here. St. Mark's had a balcony and it reminded me a bit of Tishman, except Sven and Liam weren't in the balcony like the old men in the muppets. Some went to nearby bars. I walked back the few blocks to my hotel (the Carlton Arms) to pick up my bag and head to Penn Station for the train to New Haven , Connecticut to meet another friend and fellow alum.

It had stopped raining. I touched the Buddha at the Carlton Arms entryway for what - luck? wishes? Left a penny for my thoughts - like everyone else.

I decided to bring along Donna Tartt's novel, "The Secret History" to read while on the planes and trains. I finished it the day after I returned to Minneapolis . Tartt models the fictional college of Hampden after Bennington College with references to the Commons, the dorms and other Bennington landmarks. It is a murder mystery, a close knit group of six sequestered undergraduate students studying Greek philosophy. It was a fitting time to read the book, one I had always meant to read but was put on the back burner due to other projects. "We don't like to admit it," said Julian (the Greek instructor in the novel), "but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people - the ancients no less than us -- have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self. Are we, in this room, really very different from the Greeks or the Romans? Obsessed with duty, piety, loyalty, sacrifice? All those things which are to modern tastes so chilling?"

No longer a mystery. Those shoes - others will fill them but no one else will walk in them.

Liam Memorial Photo

2007-10-01T12:16:00.000-07:00

thanks to Woody Lewis:

Liam’s New York Memorial Service

2007-10-01T12:05:00.001-07:00

by Woody Lewis

Hi all,

This is in response to Christine Walker's request for a report on my trip to New York to attend Liam Rector's memorial. Hi Chris. I know you'll understand that I had to take a few days to gather my thoughts, particularly with the chaos of work and a wife laid up from foot surgery. I've copied the Bay Area Bennington folks who were on Thaila's recent email, as well as many folks from my class of Jan '07.

How strange that in today's New York Times Book Review, Lies! Schillinger's review of The Gathering by Anne Enright bears the title Liam's Wake. One last cosmic joke, and that's the pervasive feeling of last week's gathering, that Liam was up there in the balcony, smiling and taking it all in.

I caught a flight from San Jose last Friday. Usually, the thought of coming back east, especially to a gathering of Bennington folks, puts me in an upbeat mood. Needless to say, that was not the case this time. I had a sense of uneasiness: though I knew why I was going, I didn't know what to expect. I had the honor of being one of the ushers, but that would only put me closer to the uncertainty.

New York was hot and muggy that night, but I made my way into Manhattan and had dinner with a friend. I woke up Saturday morning and wrote nearly a thousand words, somehow knowing that was the right thing to do. It started raining right before I left my hotel - one more joke from the prankster! I bought an umbrella from a Duane-Reade drugstore (a New York icon) and took a cab downtown the church.

There were knots of people out in front, and I said hello to Sven Birkerts and his wife, Alice Mattison and her husband, and then headed inside where the ushers had been told to assemble an hour before the ceremony. We flew around unstacking and deploying what seemed like hundreds of folding chairs. The church had no air conditioning, and we were challenged to remain fresh. As the time approached, many people waited at the front door. I had a chance to say hi to Tree and she seemed poised and determined. She was the first speaker after an admirable rendition of "Happy Trails," the old Roy Rogers signoff tune. I was struck by her assertion that Liam had not been depressed, and by her acceptance of what had happened. Nothing I write will do justice to the quiet calm with which she addressed her attentive audience.

Liam's daughter Virginia spoke next, and she was perhaps a bit more poignant when she chastised him for not being around to see his grandchildren. She expressed anger, but in a controlled and loving way.

One of the toughest things to hear was Donald Hall's short speech. I was somewhat surprised to see him, given his frail health, but the closeness of his friendship with Liam was obvious in his remarks. Unable to mount the podium, he sat in front of the audience and told us he'd prepared some remarks, but that he'd cried every time he'd read them. What we heard instead was a loving recollection, spoken only as the laureate can.

Jill McCorkle and Amy Hempel were charming in their remembrances, as were several old friends of Liam's. Unfortunately, Ed Ochester was unable to fly out of Pittsburgh due to the airport's closing. Victoria Clausi gave a warm and loving tribute, as did Bob Shacochis in his inimitable way. Sven began his remarks with the salutation "You bastard," and we all knew just how he meant it. You could feel the gentle chastising, the sense of premature loss, of somehow being cheated. What better audience to express this?

Askold showed a short film, slides really, of scenes from Liam's life. Most memorable were the pictures of his wedding, when Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon seemed like brother and sister to Liam and Tree. There was also a risqué picture of a young, svelte Liam in the full monty. Smiling, always smiling.

Many of those in attendance caught trains back out of the city, to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and other points of origin. A few of us headed out to the streets and spent the next few hours pub-crawling, lifting glass after glass, saying "To Liam," as if to keep his spirit around a bit longer. He would have been proud, and perhaps a bit envious.

Thanks for letting me share this with you. Funny how I'm normally garrulous, but almost reluctant to write this. I've attached a Word document with scanned images of the program. Took me awhile to do it - I kept staring at his picture.

Feel free to send this to anyone not on the distribution, it's the best
that I could do under the circumstances.

Think I'll have another drink.

Best,
Woody

Liam’s Memorial Service

2007-09-27T11:23:00.000-07:00

by Cheryl Tucker
September 22, 2007

We arrived just after two-thirty at St. Mark’s Church to find a long line curling from the church door to around the bend of the sidewalk. They weren’t letting anyone in yet. The rain that had surprised us earlier in the day was holding off. We saw many familiar faces; some had come from Texas, California, Minnesota, some from Philadelphia, Vermont, upstate. A mix of teachers, students, and friends. In line I chatted with Doug Korb and his wife Erica from Vermont, and Allison Pereto from Boston, who had been in town since Thursday night.
At three we entered the dark church, which was full and bustling, everyone moving about to get a good seat but also wanting to stop and talk to everyone because it’s usually only twice a year that we get to see everyone in one room. The only light came from the altar, where there were several pairs of candles placed at different heights behind an empty podium. In front of the podium a vase of sunflowers and daisies. We found a seat along the carpeted edge separated from the main section by white Roman columns. Not the best seat but it gave a good view of all the people in the center. Figuring out who was there was just as much part of the ceremony as honoring Liam. Woody Lewis, of course, had gotten himself a good seat in the middle section, a few rows back from Donald Hall, who was leaning over smiling as he chatted with someone. People seemed in good spirits. A reunion nonetheless, despite the circumstances. I saw Kevin McCarthy on the other side of the aisle, Jason Shinder, Phillip Lopate, Susan Cheever, Cilla, Victoria, Alice Mattison’s big shock of hair in the center, Askold’s tall figure toward the front, Tree was going back and forth between people in the front row.
The first of the twenty speakers, Kathleen White, began the service by singing “Happy Trails.” Projected onto the wall behind her were the words, “American Prodigal #6.”
It was then I noticed that each set of candles were placed inside a pair of shoes. All different. All Liam’s. I had no idea that Liam had a thing for shoes. By the end of the service, I would learn he had a thing for clothes, too. I’d never suspected that Liam might have been a closet metrosexual.
Tree was next to speak. She said “Happy Trails” seems more like a closing than an opening, which was appropriate. She said the Liam lived deliberately, as he had died—as he had committed suicide—deliberately. He was not depressed, she made a point of saying. She spoke about his character, the vortex, his passion for poetry, that Liam was “less interested in transcendence than anyone I’ve ever known,” and that he “hated the word ‘balance.’” She talked about the note, how he had told her in it, “I have a clear mind, remember me as . . . a builder. You stay. And build and love.” (This is paraphrasing, I’m probably getting some of this wrong. Forgive me.) She quoted his line about rapport (“find someone with whom you have rapport and proceed; do not proceed with those with whom you do not have rapport”).
She quoted from one of Liam’s favorite works, Eliot’s Four Quartets:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

She told us about Liam’s last night, how they had danced together in the study. He was wearing a tuxedo with a polo shirt.

“The world is always falling apart,” he said often. And, “Those who build are merry.”
----
His daughter, Virginia, was next. She said she always knew that she didn’t want to live in a grey world, and having a father like Liam assured her that things would always be black and white. He was a giant among men, and she feels bad for the men in her life who will have to compete with him (“You will always be the man in my life”). She gave us his advice he had given her over the years: Find those with whom…; The opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is indifference; Life’s not fair (he’d joked he used to lean over her crib and whisper it to her!). She said she wasn’t angry that he killed himself, but she was angry that he didn’t say goodbye to her and that he loved her, one last time.
---
Donald Hall sat in a chair in front of the podium. He’d said that he had tried to prepare something but every time he tried to practice what he had written he couldn’t read it. He told us that he’d known Liam for twenty years, and that when Liam had visited him in his office the first time, Donald was struck by how there was zero expression on Liam’s face. Not the hint of a smile. He thought Liam was doing that “old hippie thing”—don’t trust anyone over 30. He had known Liam and Tree separately and then together. Their wedding was at Donald’s backyard. He and Liam were avid letter-writers to each other. Sometimes Liam would write Donald two letters from the same day, full of stuff about movies, clothes, shoes, poetry. Liam had sent him a letter a year ago, just after learning that Donald was going to be the Poet Laureate; it had a list in it of 85 things he needed to do as Poet Laureate, including radio interviews, contests, foundations, etc, and taking over HBO & Showtime and devoting them to poetry, along with his typical obscene suggestions. And to urge more poets to commit suicide.

It was hot in the church. People were fanning themselves with their program.

Amy and Jill went up and the theme was, naturally, about dogs. They talked about life at the faculty house at the Bennington residencies, and how his warm, boyish side took over in front of the dogs (they saw his “inner dog”). How they were lucky to get Liam’s first and last thought of the day, how he loved to watch the dogs play and run around first thing in the morning. And, that Liam’s life in dog years was 399.
---
Jerry Winestone was an old friend of Liam’s from Chevy Chase, Maryland. He’d known Liam for forty years, and knew him as Ron, his birth name. He looked around the church and said how funny it was that the service was being held in one, considering how Liam would probably be “creeped out,” given his mistrust of religion. It’s beautiful, though, Jerry said, and then imagined what Liam’s response to that might be: “Yes, it’s beautiful, but at what cost?”
---
Tom Sleigh talked about Liam’s skepticism as a kind of love and read Liam’s
“This Summer”:

Sitting in the chair that is somewhere
between the chair of a barbershop and a beauty parlor,
chemo dripping into the catheter

surgically implanted into my chest, into body,
I resolve to smoke at least a half-ounce
of marijuana when I get home.

Perhaps I'll smoke a pound.
Dizzier than hell must be dizzy,
I'm still able to drive

(though will I be able next week?),
and after getting my ticket punched
I roar out of the Farber Clinic

(how splendid to have cancer in Boston
and fall heir to the astute care
available here)

in the silver sports car I sport
during this debacle,
and heat roars into me

with humidity so deep
it is a theological offense
which I cannot help

but take personally.
I think I may die without god,
my single comic integrity

that I have remained
an atheist in the foxhole,
though I am ready

to roar through the gates
if there are gates.
This summer I've joined the grown-old,

the infirm, the shut-ins, and the bald-headed young
(they the hardest to bear), this summer
starting with chemotherapy and ending,

by god it seems almost an ending,
with thirty radiation treatments
which have brought me to my knees.

The marijuana works. It clears things.
How lovely!
How lonely it is sometimes to have cancer.

The grass is as good as it was
when I was sixteen and found grass made the grass
a bit greener over yonder.

Almost as good
as the music I listened to that summer.
This summer I rejoin

the ever-new and always refreshing
"Get naked and stay stoned," Baudelairian crowd
as I plop stoned in the many rocks

of a river in Vermont
next to my friend's house
where we have for so many summers

worshipped the backroads
with the sports cars the two of us have driven
since we got the money to get them.

In a sports car I have worshipped this summer
the songs I've recorded on tape
driving and listening incessantly,

thinking this may be my last summer
this summer. This summer
I have conversed with death every minute

and found out I have the talent
to submit, to leave, even to flee,
and, in this, there's nothing exceptional

about me. Why, the sidewalks around Farber
are populated with so many about to die,
many of great courage and grim humor and great shuffle

getting ready, as they can, to go,
looking like they do, like the wounded of Atlanta
lying around in Atlanta just after the burning

of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind.
I am among them.
They are mine, and I am theirs.

Our motto: Fight to live; prepare to go.
This summer it is so good
to hear from friends (one of whom I hear

just died: brain tumor) before I drive on out
for another burn of radiation
before I suit myself with another week of chemo

tied to a portable belt so I can go out
easily to the ocean, to remaining
friends there, before I lean into another joint,

a late century life afloat on a sea of loans,
and hear over the telephone my sixteen-year-old
daughter in Virginia saying she now thinks

she will never ever smoke marijuana
because it is, after all,
just another "gateway drug.”

---
Linda Gregg read a poem she had written the day after she heard the news about Liam. It’s called “If We Are Quiet.” Many lines began “Now that you are dead…” then “Now that you have shot yourself” … then “Now that you have blown your brains out…” Other lines I remember: “I am tired of the theater of death when it is not true.” “If we are quiet enough to see.”
---
Martha quoted from Emerson, “A real poet is free and makes free.” A real poet, like Liam, gives permission to himself and by doing so gives permission to others. She talked about his wild imagination, how Alice Mattison admitted once to feeling like a figment of Liam’s imagination.” He had a great capacity to “spring people from their own cages.”
---
Jason Shindler said that You can only see in yourself what you can see in others. He spoke of Liam’s 200-pound heart as he stood at Jason’s bedside when he was in the hospital. “May his love bring us more love. May his poetry bring us more poetry.”
---
Elizabeth Wray is Liam’s first wife. She called Liam the “master builder.” She remembers that he told her that his first book report was for a book about Oklahoma tornadoes, which was a familiar mental landscape for him: anything can be uprooted at any time. They would arrive somewhere together and Liam would typically “bolt.” She remembers the hippie bookstore he worked at, how he was upset at a recent change to add quiche (not sure this detail is right), so when asked by the manager to reorganize the newly established romance section, Liam promptly took all of the romance books and threw them in the dumpster out back. He was not fired. At 27, he proclaimed to everyone that he was changing his name, he sent out formal announcements. Elizabeth closed by quoting one of Liam’s favorite songwriters, Leonard Cohen, “. . . There is a crack, there is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
---
Matthew Grey told us the advice Liam gave him when Matthew’s dog died. Liam said, “After a proper period of mourning, get a new dog.” It worked.
---
Victoria thanked Liam for all of the music he made for people on cassettes and CDs, and told us how carefully he’d constructed each mix. He called the mixes “Sentimentia”—the place between sentiment and dementia.
---
Bob Shacochis’s first words: “AH, LIAM, YOU CRUEL BASTARD! . . . You brought us together again.” He spoke of a death “grievously im-, premature [laugh] ha—I almost said grievously immature . . .” “You thought life was precious in all its marvelous absurdities . . .[but] you seemed to believe . . . that death was precious as well.” He watched too many movies. [the following is absolute paraphrase]: The last night of your life, Tree came home from a reading, you danced with her in your tux to the “Mashed Potatoes” song. Tree told me recently that the real name of the song isn’t “Mashed Potatoes” but is “Gravy.” Which is odd because that’s the title of a Raymond Carver poem, which goes:

No other word will do. For that's what it was. Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. "Don't weep for me,"
he said to his friends. "I'm a lucky man.
I've had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don't forget it."

Bob reminded us that ten years ago Liam had had a heart attack, and nine years ago he was diagnosed with cancer with a 20% chance of survival. Pure gravy. In his note to Tree, he had written, “Time to go.”
---
Sven addressed Liam, saying [paraphrase]: when you wrote to me all about the beauty of clothes and shoes, I thought you were kidding, but you really did think about that stuff! . . . You broke the contract . . . there’s supposed to be continuity between friends. It’s part of the deal.” He quoted the “Epitaph to Malcolm Lowry”:

Malcolm Lowry
Late of the Bowery
His prose was flowery
And often glowery
He lived, nightly, and drank, daily,
And died playing the ukulele.
---
Lucie Brock-Broido is an old friend of Liam’s. She met him in Baltimore and was “smitten,” finding him perfectly “Heathcliffean,” on a late-night walk stopping to spit in the sewer with his animal body. He was always about Abandon, Leaving, Going . . .
---
Askold played a (silent) movie of snapshots of Liam throughout his life (Askold said “The only movie of Liam’s life without a soundtrack!”). Almost all pics with that beard. With Virginia when she was a baby, at Bennington, with friends, with Tree . . . and even one (from the 70s?) in some bathroom in the nude.
---
(In the pause before the next speaker, I half-expected to hear Liam’s voice booming some comment. The comparison to Tischman was that close. Without Liam, no one is left to command the space. Strangely boom-less.)
---
David Fenza remarked that “most of us wear our nervous system on the inside . . . Liam wore his nervous system on the outside.” “He was bitter and brash among the falsely sweet.” “For he was so contrary, let us disagree about who he was.”
---
David Broza went up with a guitar. All of us fanning programs. David strummed and told us that Liam and Matthew Grey had taught him how to eat hamburgers with gravy and they’d share their poetry with him. For years he’d been trying to put Liam’s poem “In Snow” to music, but couldn’t find the melody. He was scared. Then one night, stuck at Liam and Tree’s apartment in Boston because of a snowstorm, Liam breathed down his neck and said to him, “Now’s the time.” And then he came up with the melody, which he played for us. For the first time in the service I cried. He then played a song with Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” which was also beautiful and at the end I couldn’t tell if it was an echo or if people were singing along.

After the service, most of us gathered in the back for a reception outdoors. And most made plans for what bar they were going to go to afterwards to have a good, long, hard drink.

For Liam

2007-09-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

by stephen page

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep -
He hath awakened from the dream of life -
-an excerpt from Adonais
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am sorry I did not cry
when I opened the letter, but
death notices always set me into
a delayed-pain mode.
There are always people to notify,
things to arrange,
appearances to uphold—
I must admit,
I felt a shudder, but—
Function Shock I call it.

You are responsible for my education:
you accepted me into your program.
"Always be closing," you said,
"and have fun while you do it.
Put your art before everything else.
Love the poem more than you love
the subject of the poem,
at least while you are writing the poem.
Verse is about turning,
returning."

Today I walked to the big woodpatch
in the middle of my ranch,
and when I was sure no one was around,
that no employee could see me,
I sat on a tree stump,
and I let myself think of the last moment I saw you,
in the cafeteria,
when while setting your food tray on the conveyor belt,
sending it on toward that long slow journey to the scullery,
you turned and looked at me,
and smiled.

The Founder of Our Education

2007-08-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

For Liam

2007-08-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

excerpt from Adonais
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822)

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep -
He hath awakened from the dream of life -
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. -We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

The Gangsta Car Parked Inside the State Line

2007-08-15T20:04:00.000-07:00

June 07 Residency Photos

2007-07-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

Everyone is a Poet at Heart

2007-07-23T04:03:00.000-07:00

happy 4th

2007-07-06T07:17:00.000-07:00

Bob Hicok feature

2007-07-03T14:50:00.001-07:00

My friend (& the assistant editor of Pebble Lake Review) Matt Siegel is on the Poetry Daily prose feature of the week, "Is a Pepper Steak a Steak Made of Pepper?: An Interview with Bob Hicok." Go read it.

graduation cool thing to do

2007-06-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

hey. i am watching the last king of scotland. the beginning is a bunch of university grads ripping off their gowns and clothes while running down a hill and jumping into a lake. i think we should do that. it will be june and somewhat warm. we could all run down to the pond and jump in in our underwear.

Photos

2007-06-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! What a great, whirlwind residency! I feel so fortunate to have been able to share my time, writing, dinners, and dance moves with all of you. We're such a talented, supportive class and I wish each of you a wonderful, productive term.

I've posted my photos here. If you have photos you would like to share, please email them to me and I'll upload them to our online June 08 photo album.

Call for Manuscripts

2007-06-13T01:20:00.000-07:00

Pebble Lake Review is accepting nonfiction submissions for its forthcoming Summer 2007 issue. Although PLR reads year-round, submissions must be received no later than July 15 to be considered for the Summer issue.

We accept critical essays, commentary, memoir, and excerpts or larger works (memoirs in progress) of 3,000 words or less. Previously published work will not be considered.

Nonfiction submissions are only accepted via email as a Word or RTF attachment. Submissions should be sent c/o Todd Dillard, Nonfiction Editor.

Not Mattering to the Earth

2007-06-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

poets 08

if you have time (who has that?), check out the verse daily web page archives for 6 june. a great poem by colette inez. oh hell, i'll just paste it here.

stephen

Not Mattering to the Earth

On the day that we die,
crayfish do or don't return
to their torpor, claws idled in the sand,
bees dozing in the tattered rose or not.

Where frogs stop
their perpetual wakefulness
on pond, bog, swamp,
we may float in the scent of lilies and moss.

And in the sea whose sharks begin,
at last, to drowse under shadowy reefs,
only to rise again,
numbed by the cold,

we will join the anglerfish,
waving long filaments of dreams
that brush past our eyes, heavy
with inconsequence.

Copyright © 2007 Colette Inez All rights reserved
from the Southern Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

are you getting published?

2007-06-04T03:52:00.000-07:00

PLR Spring 2007 Now Online!

2007-05-27T13:34:00.000-07:00

The Spring 2007 issue of Pebble Lake Review is now online!

In this issue: Kim Addonizio, Paul Guest, Matt Hart, Bob Hicok, Melanie Jordan, Laurie Clements Lambeth, Clay Matthews, Lydia Melvin, Eric Shade, Alison Stine, Betsy Wheeler, Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, and many more.

Plus reviews of the fever almanac by Kristy Bowen, Other Fugitives and Other Strangers by Rigoberto González, The Mending Worm by Joan Houlihan, Intaglio by Ariana-Sophia M. Kartsonis, and Mosquito by Alex Lemon.

We are currently reading for our Summer 2007 issue, which will be released in late August.

Poetry in the Park (and under your rumpus)

2007-05-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago my husband Adam and I drove to Pittsburgh for several reasons:

1) Ben managed to get his hands on a stunning Galanti Bros. accordion (circa 1920) with mother-of-pearl finish, little blue flowers, and—my personal favorite—rhinestones. He found this piece in the garage of a woman who inherited 40 accordions. (Only Ben would know someone who knows someone who inherited 40 accordions). He picked it up for Adam, who's teaching himself the accordion.

2) Ben's poem was selected to grace four beautiful benches in a Pittsburgh park. The four stone benches, which circle a little garden, each have one line of his poem carved in them. The poem was supposed to embody the history of the park, the natural surroundings of the area, as well as the current community. Somehow Ben managed to fit all this into four lines! We got to see Ben read his poem at the park as part of a local festival. And we got to meet a lot of his friends too, because everyone in the neighborhood seems to know Ben!

Yay Ben! And with that cash award, we know who’s supplying the gin in June!

Here is a Character for Your Novel

2007-05-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

Bell

2007-05-03T15:24:00.000-07:00

Attention Sylvia Plath afficinados: have you heard that a film is to be made of The Bell Jar? There's an interesting article (here) from The Independent about the film-makers approach, asking the question: can Julia Stiles (who is set to portray Plath) "turn angst into a movie?"

Did anyone see Paltrow's portrayal of Plath in Sylvia? What are your thoughts?

Vote!

2007-05-03T00:24:00.000-07:00

I'm almost finished with my poetry manuscript (2+ years in the making) & I'm toying with possible titles. Want to vote? Go here.

Poem of the Month

2007-04-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

The River's Heart

The waves of a calm river
Bashing the deep sea green
Hugging the shore and the trees
The leaves whispering
Into the water
Its fast-rushing waves
Dashing to the waterfall
Seaweed draping the river's floor
And the splashing of its heart
Splish, splash, splash.

Maya, 4th Grade

(inter)National Poetry Month

2007-04-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

as many of you know, april is (inter)national poetry month. if you wish to,
you may subscribe to these poem a day newsletters:

http://poets.org/poemADay.php

http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry/index.pperl

http://quotations.about.com/c/ec/1.htm

http://www.writersintheschools.org/wits.cfm?a=cms,c,113,2,

and podcasts:

http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry/poemaday/index.xml

http://www.sonibyte.com/rssfeed/4.xml

http://www.pw.org/audio/PW_podcast.xml

itpc://poetryfoundation.org/podrss.xml

http://poempresent.uchicago.edu/poempresent_audio.xml

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/podcast/

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/podcasts.html

By God We'll Read Poetry!

2007-04-04T08:32:00.000-07:00

Blogger Control

2007-03-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

Fringe Magazine

2007-03-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

Fringe Magazine ("The noun that verbs your world.") seeks a motivated genre editor for its (de)Classified section, which prints cross-genre work. Appreciation of and/or experience writing both poetry and prose a must. Duties include soliciting submissions, managing reading staff, making editorial decisions, and participating in editorial meetings. Candidates living in North Carolina or Glasgow strongly preferred. We do all our business via the internet, so computer literacy is a must. If interested, email FringetheMagazine@gmail.com for more information and check out our website, www.FringeMagazine.org.

Note: I have no affiliation with Fringe, though I did see them @ AWP. This would be a great opportunity to those of you who are interested in getting into the publishing/editing field.

If you've sent me an email, I will get back to you ASAP! I've been very ill lately, as you might've gathered from my blog.

It was fun seeing Allison at AWP! Erica & Nikki: where were you? I heard rumors of your presence, but didn't see either of you!

Triangulated

2007-03-14T15:32:00.000-07:00

here's the article about life and writing:

http://caitoneil.home.mindspring.com/articles/pw/triangle.html

AWP

2007-03-08T07:48:00.000-08:00

so, who went to the AWP? How did it go?

The Writer's Triangle

2007-02-21T10:23:00.000-08:00

There is a really great article in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers, entitled,The Writer's Triangle - Balancing Writing With Living, by Caitlin O'Neil.

Can't Write? - Thank Calvin

2007-02-20T04:13:00.000-08:00

Call for Manuscripts!

2007-02-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

Pebble Lake Review is accepting submissions of fiction and nonfiction for forthcoming issues.

GUIDELINES:

How to Submit: Please send typed manuscript with cover letter listing publication credits, if any, and a SASE. Name, address, and email must appear on cover letter. Accepts simultaneous submissions (if noted), no previously published material, no multiple submissions. Submissions will be accepted via email and postal mail (no disks). Submissions that do not follow these guidelines will be returned unread. Response time is typically 1-4 months.

Fiction: Send a short story, 3,000 words maximum care of Fiction Editor. If submitting via email, send stories to fiction@pebblelakereview.com, as Word or RTF attachment only. If submitting via postal mail, send to the address below.

Nonfiction: We accept critical essays, commentary, memoir, and excerpts or larger works (memoirs in progress) of 3,000 words or less. Please do not send classroom or “workshop” material. Send work care of Todd Dillard, Nonfiction editor to: nonfiction@pebblelakereview.com as a Word or RTF attachment only.

Snail Mail:

15318 Pebble Lake Dr.
Houston, TX 77095

moot, or not?

2007-02-15T10:04:00.000-08:00

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. - Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

Superhero Supply

2007-02-09T08:55:00.000-08:00

Need a little extra something to get you through your current packet? Memory potion? Telegnostic powers? It's all right here.

PHOTOS!

2007-02-03T22:25:00.000-08:00

I've finally been able to have a moment to sit down & upload the few photos I have from this past residency. I have a total of 10-12 photos, most of which are of snow (the whole one day we had of it!) I do have a few photos from Dark Night, however. If you want me to share the photos with you, email me.

Enjoy!

ERICA: Email me about AWP!

An Interview With Jim Harrison

2007-02-02T15:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/books/25harr.html?ex=1170565200&en=816cc3ad0ba8f46b&ei=5070

Don't Feed the Poets

2007-02-02T08:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/books/review/Harrison2.t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bu&oref=slogin

30 in 30

2007-02-01T15:47:00.000-08:00

Pebble Lake Review 30 in 30 Annual Subscription Drive! Subscribe now for the special rate of $20/3 issues, including the forthcoming Spring 2007 issue*, which features the work of Kim Addonizio, Paul Guest, Matt Hart, Bob Hicok, Melanie Jordan, Karyna McGlynn, Lydia Melvin, Eric Shade, Alison Stine, Betsy Wheeler & more!

Order from: Pebble Lake Review, 15318 Pebble Lake Dr., Houston, TX 77095

*PLR is still open to submissions for this issue.

AWP, anyone?

2007-02-01T13:33:00.000-08:00

I just saw the schedule, and I thought I might head down to Atlanta (Georgia!? I've never been to Georgia!) and see what this AWP business is all about. My plans aren't firm, but I wonder whether anyone from Bennington plans to go?

Hope you all are doing well; I just got Packet I in the mail today. It was so fun to see all of you in VT; can't wait til June!

Erica

Measures for Catching

2007-01-30T13:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, so here's my weird blog. Spam poems. Found oddities. Etcetera. Scroll down for the images. They're in there, I promise.

http://binocycle.blogspot.com/

Do your students love you?

2007-01-29T11:55:00.000-08:00

I remember a couple dinner conversations last January that revolved around teacher anxiety over student evaluations, especially on websites like www.RateMyTeachers.com or www.RateMyProfessors.com. Here's an article from Inside Higher Education that suggests teacher ratings are not correlated with actual student learning. There are some interesting bits, such as the following: "Previous studies have found that students are more likely to give good reviews to instructors who are easy graders or who are good looking" (are we surprised?) and the new study "found evidence that students — controlling for other factors — tend to give lesser evaluations to instructors who are women or who were born outside the United States.”

For those of you who might be interested, here's the link: http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/29/evaluate

Katie

photos?

2007-01-25T23:30:00.000-08:00

Hey all...lovely to see you. What did you all think of our second residency? Anyone have photos to share? (my camera fell off the desk in my dorm room...and the lens broke...so I have no pics)
Best! Nikki

On Teaching

2007-01-24T05:45:00.000-08:00

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. - James
Thurber (1894 - 1961)

Started Your First Packet Yet?

2007-01-18T12:06:00.000-08:00

SPAM

2007-01-17T08:48:00.000-08:00

WONDERLAND SPAM POEM

for Ben Hartlage

The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel
for some way. This speech caused a remarkable

sensation among the party. With glances of hatred
and smiles of bitter scorn,

passions are people that walk with their heads
downward. The Antipathies, I came near her,
she began, in a low, timid voice,

If you please, shudder at the ghostly shape
of his old beloved dwelling, and the imagination
and morbid feelings;

the latter, beautiful and virtuous.

The last thing he ever said to me was,
Just always be waiting on a holiday,

to revel in the discovery of a complicated
crime; as they must go by the carrier,

she thought; and how funny it’ll be. By this
time she had found her way into a tidy little
room with an inherent brightness;

the greater stars were burning and wept
in later years, but who now were most terrible

of all, by their off its every-day aspect,
and make it a proper theatre for so wild,

this is the driest thing I know.

Silence all round, if you please.

Other dust, now wore a look
from which the two trembling mortals
perhaps their cheeks might have grown pale

had not the crimson west. There was nothing
so VERY remarkable in that;

nor did Alice. And then he flew us all away
to the Neverland and the fairies

and pleasurable interest, manifested by flashes
of expression across his question, it didn’t much matter which way

she put it. She felt when she expressed
a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell

would be glad to rather sleepy, and went on
saying to herself, in a dreamy sort

from the moment she arrived on the mainland
she wanted to ask their first babes, though
pillowed so long on their bosoms. Many

had become wholly the property of one,
unless by the extinction of the Very Soon.

The Rabbit noticed Alice, as she went hunting
about, cold and blood-stained hearth
where he lay dead. I heard

the way? Which way?, holding her hand

on the top of her head to hot, she kept fanning
herself all the time she went on talking:
of their disgrace into an honorable monument

of his own antiquarian smoldering fire, while
a tempest of wintry rain was beating
on the and would only say,

I am older than you, and must know better;
one for catching mice—

oh, I beg your pardon, cried Alice again,
to prayer.

There stood the early settlers, those old illustrious ones.

[composed from Ben's method of using SPAM emails to generate found poems]

S.O.S.

2007-01-14T13:18:00.000-08:00

it was great seeing everyone this past residency and great seeing everyone's dance moves...

now, i totally need y'alls help...

i just totally realized that the graduation talks go alphabetically by last name and i am having serious anxiety issues about going after amanda... so could someone maybe either:

a) switch with me
or
b) convince amanda to do a really, REALLY boring speech?

here's the thing y'all she's like a poet, with like a journal and stuff

um... i'm a chemistry teacher who sets tables on fire... nice parlor trick but hardly something i can do for liam, etc.

great seeing everyone :) :)

oh, and people who were bright enough to bring cameras... would you guys pleasee download the pics so I can milk my bennington residency memories for as long as possible?

Dark Night

2007-01-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

We need to plan what we're going to do for Dark Night ASAP, so it won't be left to the last minute.

DN begins, aptly, at dark, so outdoor activites are probably a no-go (it's hard to sled in the cold dark).

What do you want to do? Suggestions? Comments? Who will have a car?

2007 Tupelo Press Snowbound Series Chapbook Competition Opens

2006-12-26T16:16:00.000-08:00

https://www.tupelopress.org/indexssl.shtml

The Gift

2006-12-23T13:23:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays

2006-12-22T06:45:00.000-08:00

"In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!'"

- Dave Barry

Marlboro

2006-12-11T00:02:00.000-08:00

I have some big news I wanted to share with you guys! You can see my news over at my blog.

Looking forward to snow (& to seeing you all!)

School's Out!

2006-12-04T05:33:00.000-08:00

Plans

2006-12-03T23:32:00.000-08:00

Start thinking about what you want to do on this year's Dark Night. Please take into account that it's going to be FREEZING & that some of us (a-hem) will not be entirely acclimated to the North by that point in the residency.

What'cha what'cha what'cha want (key in the Beastie Boys) to do? Post here!

Just Do It

2006-11-26T11:49:00.000-08:00

Dad, Can You Read?

2006-11-20T07:02:00.000-08:00

Voice

2006-11-19T01:50:00.000-08:00

When language is in action, there is always a speaker. He is always somewhere, speaking to someone, about something - Wilga M. Rivers

Teacher Exchange

2006-11-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

I am wondering if there is a good way to exchange comments about our current teachers before we select new ones for the winter semester. Is this a good forum for that or would the yahoo e-mail list be better? Or something else entirely? I'm not quite sure what would be most effective. (It gets a bit messy with all the different genres.) Anyone have a bright idea?