Three Good Things

[susanstinson]

I recorded the piece that I wrote for my parents' 50th anniversary for WAMC, the public radio station in Albany, which can be heard in Western Massachusetts and a bunch other places, too. They're going to get back to me with the air date, but the producer said that she was thinking of holding for around Valentine's Day, which never would have occured to me as relevant. They don't post commentaries on their website, though, so, no listening from other continents or time zones this time.

I'm taking a great $5 poetry class at Smith College -- it's every afternoon for a week, and the instructor, Patrick Donnelly, is giving this really lovely, beautifully structured and inspired overview of what poems are and do and various strategies for making them work, backed up with all of this great poetry as examples, and it is all blowing through me like a good stiff wind, all that heightened language and those lyric leaps and the beautifully rendered impulse to get things said.

And I'm going for a week to a writer's retreat on Lake Superior in Northern Minnesota in August. I've never been to Minnesota before.

Comments

[amarama.livejournal.com]

It's good that you're going in August, because Minnesota is cold! But good. North Country.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

That's why I picked August.

[felicks.livejournal.com]

yay! Cool!

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[tin-lizzy.livejournal.com]

cool! i live in Mpls, love the North Shore/Lake Superior area. should be a cool retreat up there :)

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

I've seen pictures, and it looks beautiful.

[arielblue.livejournal.com]

I went to the Split Rock Arts Program in Duluth one summer. It's gorgeous up that way, but do take mosquito repellant -- the mosquitoes there are approximately the size of 747's. :)

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Uh oh! I forgot about the mosquitoes.

[pitbull-poet.livejournal.com]

Norcroft? It's a good place. I had an amazing 13 days of writing there some years ago.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's Norcroft. It's closing -- this could be a mantra with me -- so this is their last season, and, for the most part, only returning residents are going, but I was only the selection committee last year, so I'm going, too. It looks very beautiful in the pictures.

Good one!

[crazycrone.livejournal.com]

And I'm going for a week to a writer's retreat on Lake Superior in Northern Minnesota

Sounds pretty damn idyllic!

Re: Good one!

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Here's hoping.

[amnesiascope.livejournal.com]

I can't second enough the earlier commentor's point about mosquito repellent! I went hiking for a week in the Superior National Forest about 10 years ago and came back thoroughly consumed, despite fancy hi-tech hiking clothes and gallons of mosquito repellent. On the other hand, it's insanely beautiful up there during the summer.

I've always thought, though, that the best time to see Lake Superior is during an autumn storm ... I love the gray, choppy water and the temperate rainforest feel of early Fall on Lake Superior.

And speaking of poetry, you may want to head over to Hibbard and immerse yourself in a little Tillie Olsen (http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/NCW/yft.htm), whose I Want You Women Up North to Know (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/olsen/north.htm) is still one of the best poems I've ever read.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Tillie Olsen's prose was one of the lights of my reading life in my twenties, but I don't know her poetry. (She's got a phrase --"the knife of the perfectionist attitude" -- that I hear in my head when I'm fighting to keep working). I'll keep my eyes open.

August is a particularly good time to leave the steaming, humid east coast, so, forewarned about the mosquitoes -- I usually don't use repellant, but this is sounding serious, and I'll be miles from town without a car -- so I'll remember to keep my skin covered, slather something on, and hope for the best.

[songquake.livejournal.com]

lots of B vitamins help, too... apparently it makes your human scent smell less appealing.

or, you know, you can stop breathing. but i wouldn't recommend that. *grin*

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

I never heard about the B vitamins and mosquitoes, so will file the advice away for August.