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Growing into “Real Writing”
I’ve heard that the prestigious summer writers’ conference near Middlebury, Vermont, has changed: that the booze doesn’t flow the way it once did, and writers don’t fall into sexual escapades with each other as part of their creative process.
But it’s hard to believe that human nature can change that far, or that a college administration bothers to control eager, paying adults at “summer camp” in the mountains. The presence of Robert Frost tramps the nearby trails without squelching any adventurous spirits. One aging poet I met there giggled as he recounted once clutching a “summer moment” in his arms and getting “watered on” by a noted author who was standing on a balcony above, in the darkness, taking a leak through the railings, unaware of the couple below.
Oh, the lectures! To sit in chairs where the best-of-the-best sat before you, and listen to, say, Tim O’Brien read from his about-to-be published masterpiece The Things They Carried. Or, in an earlier session, hear the poet Linda Pastan talk about her choices in writing poetry. Develop a serious case of heroine worship for Nancy Willard, who one summer offered “How Poetry Came Into the World and Why God Doesn’t Write It.” Sit in the dining hall with people who could, by next summer, be among the published and praised.
