A Writer's Notebook, Day Five-Hundred-And-Nineteen

Tomorrow is the last day of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival.  It has been a truly wonderful experience, and one I will be unpacking for quite some time.  For one thing, I think that there is a lot more in what Major Jackson presented that deserves deeper thinking.  His approach as a teacher is very devious, I think, in it's subtlety.  While the assignments he provides at times seem clear, when you dig in on them, they become far more expansive, and he creates a context for each one that directed my thinking towards poems that I might not have felt prepared to write, but knew were important.  I think that what I've been learning this week is going to keep me thinking for a long while.

Beyond that, their have just been amazing events at the festival.  Tonight Patricia Smith came and gave an astounding reading.  She has been working with the PBPF all week doing presentations for high school students, work that I believe is incredibly vital.  Her dynamic energy and work is certain to create a huge impact for some of these individuals and I can think of few things more important for poetry's future than having young readers and writers.  One of the benefits of this program is that they are also able to call upon the poet doing that work to do a reading for the attendees and faculty, and tonight's reading was just incredible.  Patricia Smith is masterful at creating complex, emotionally charged work that is both restrained and brutal.  It honestly was the kind of work that shows just how much a poem can really accomplish, and which inspires and challenges me to see how I can improve my own work.  The entire event has really been charging me up to get to the next level, whatever that may be.

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