It is the middle of the night after the second day of the Pacific University MFA program residency. So far: five crafts talks and two faculty readings, but I skipped the second student reading last night in hopes of getting a better night’s sleep. [That last is not going well. I should not be awake.] Yesterday, I ran in the morning, napped twice, and so much has come on so quickly, I feel simultaneously sated and drained, inspired and exhausted.

Day 1, Friday: Mahtem Shiferraw spoke about “Why Intentionality Matters” as a way of seeking the truth of “what the poem wants to be.” There is video available of these craft talks, and this is one that wants reviewing. Re-viewing. Poets are making sense of nothingness, revealing the poem behind the poem. And how I know I am not a poet, because while I trust metaphor, eagerly grasp that superior truth, I reach for story every time, and however awkwardly I might tell the story, it is story that defines my life. Kellie Wells explored “What Would Joy Williams Do” as she launches prose past craft to explore how “abstraction can be used like a knife to startle” and reveal character and story in a way that beats showing “all to hell.” Faculty readers were Adrienne Christian, Omar El Akkad, and Pete Fromm. I introduced them and watched and listened to poetry, a short story, and an excerpt from a new novel.

Day 2, Saturday: Cecily Wong in “Writing Food” described how she came to write a food book less as a culinary experience than as story and anthropology and how this revealed the way food—how and what we eat—becomes a bridge between people, not mere detail, but an entry point to character and meaning. [not to self: consider a parallel between my mother crying because the beach house was electrified and my disappointment when we stopped picked strawberries.] W. Ralph Eubanks, in “The Peculiar Alchemy: On Photography and Writing,” challenges what we see as limited by what we know we are seeing, and how “words an images must exist on equal terms” in order to approach reality. Joe Millar detailed “Two Poetic Voices: The Bardic and the Lyric” as multicultural poetic traditions with the bard acting as historian to preserve culture, values, history, and relationships, while the lyricist casts light within the moment. Faculty readers Kwame Dawes and Mahtem Shiferraw took the stage together and read poems back and forth to one another seeking home.

I had lunch with the only faculty member I worked with in the program, Claire Davis. We talked about book covers, something that has been of interest to me for most of my life. Claire talked about how a book cover can make or break the book by misleading potential readers. Later, I had a prearranged dinner with Molly Gloss. That plan was fortunate for me, and the remainder of her week was packed almost from the moment she arrived on Saturday afternoon.

My own schedule at the residency is busy too, and while I had thought I would head for home after my last faculty reading introduction on Thursday evening, that’s not happening. There are events to come that I cannot miss.

About the weather: it was 90° on the first day, the air conditioning in the spacious dorm suite I have to myself is cool. I went out at 6am for a walk and covered three miles, two at my slow running pace. Campus was empty, almost no cars as I ran around the periphery, and temperatures right where I like them for a two-mile run. Day two was a less hot at midday but still too warm for me, but today promises to rise only to a pleasant 71°. There is a reason I have lived the last 45 years on the Oregon coast. I am not a fan of “hot.”

But now I will try to return to sleep. It’s after 2am and already technically day 3. Expect to read about it… later.