We then were treated to Robert Hass's craft lecture, which began with a plug for Riverofwords.org, an organization that raises awareness of the environment while also promoting child literacy. The subject of the lecture was "One-ness" (with a promise of Two-ness, Three-ness, and Four-ness to follow), by which he meant he would look at the building blocks of the units of poetry--the line, the couplet, etc., but also the rhythm that these basic combinations generate. He even applied his talk to fiction by commenting that a story arc is a sentence: "We're verbs until we die, and then we're nouns." It was quite interesting and is derived from a book he's working on about form.
During workshop time after lunch, my fellow workshop fellow, Cheryl Strayed, and I met with a number of the workshop participants to give them an opportunity to ask about publishing, agents, etc. I was glad for this opportunity because, although I've met with some of the participants privately, it doesn't seem as though I've been as helpful to people as I could be.
Then we had the final staff reading, with poems by Caki Wilkinson and fiction by Kevin Wilson. Kevin read one very short story and a longer story that cracked everyone up. Typical Kevin. (This week, Kevin also published a story in Prime Number Magazine, which you definitely should take a look at.)
The evening's entertainment was a reading by Mark Strand. Some very playful stuff.
One final day to come . . .
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