>The Wednesday night reading (Hal Ackerman, Pinckney Benedict and Dan Mueller) was terrific. Both Dan and Pinckney read new things and Hal, a screenwriter, read some published fiction, including his contribution to The Binnacle. He was amused to learn that I had a piece in that same “journal.”
The Thursday “craft” lecture was by Thorpe Moeckel and his topic was “A Walk in the Woods of a Poem in Progress.” He handed out one of his own poem drafts, pretty raw work, and we went through it together to talk about why he’d made certain choices. It was a gutsy way to organize a discussion about poetry, but it was an great introduction to the shooting range activity I’ll talk about in conjunction with Day 5 because it was a poem idea that he had after a visit to the same shooting range.
Our workshop in the afternoon was great and we wathed a significant chunk of “Stranger than Fiction” in part to see how it seems to strain convention but actually uses it in creative ways. We also watched the first several scenes of “Sea of Love” to see how the Al Pacino character is portrayed in favorable lights in three scenes and then not so favorable light to give him depth, but we also see him making a choice that is revealing of his character.
The evening’s activity was mostly pure entertainment. Our Jamaican picnic got moved inside due to the rain, but that was followed by an open mic night that was mostly pretty funny. Then much of the group moved to Don Ho’s (a dive just up the road from campus) for Karaoke Night. Uh, not me. I went, but I don’t do Karaoke.
As the conference ends, time speeds up . . .
