Poetry on a Maine Island

 

Poetry on a Maine Island: 

 A Writing Workshop

July 26-29 (three nights) 
Registration by May 15

There is nothing like an island for writing. Come to Whitehead Island located on Muscle Ridge Channel at the entrance to Penobscot Bay to experience a classic Maine island and Lightkeepers house with time to explore, write, and relax. Maine islands have a long tradition of inspiring poets of all kinds and Whitehead is a special place for inspiration. 

Travel by private boat from Spruce Head, eight miles south of Rockland. Stay in the renovated Lightkeepers house and enjoy wonderful meals. Explore the deep spruce woods and the granite outcroppings down to the sea. 

·      Open to any poets and aspiring poets of any level who will write new poetry, experiment with form and style, and revise existing work if they have it. Small class size of 7 to 14 participants.

·      We will discuss readings on craft and the work of other poets for inspiration. We will hear about the history of the island and the mainland towns.

·      We will write in plein air among the nooks and crannies of the island and in cozy spots in the Lightkeepers House.

·      Other activities include a guided walk of the island led by Whitehead Island staff, boat ride of local waters, and lobster bake.

Linda’s classes maintain a safe, supportive environment that recognizes there is no such thing as a mistake in writing, just the next draft. For more info and to register, contact 

http://www.whiteheadlightstation.org/2018-writing-workshop.html

"The Mosquito Truck"

I'm going back to a Florida summer in the Sixties here. (Parts of it are unchanged even now as in this photo.) Enjoy.

The Mosquito Truck

Thick-headed fog roams street to street, engulfing us kids, white stuff fuming from the back of the big truck. Down First, over Sea Gull, up Second, around all the numbered streets and past our house on Albatross Drive. Mosquitoes are the foe, DDT spewing from the back of a truck our big science. We believe in big science. That’s how our daddies’ rockets are going to beat the Russians’.

The cloud billows and blooms dense and white. The boys on their bikes hoop and holler from inside the soft tunnel, following as the truck makes its rounds. The only thing visible is a wheel spoke here, a foot on a pedal there, a wild face squinting. Ghost boys appear and disappear in a noisy ghost machine, following the call.

We girls hang back a bit on our bikes where the fumes are thinner. We squeal. Our eyes burn. We’re repulsed by the stench. But we, too, love the mystery of the fog; we want the magic of invisibility, the coy visibility. We want to be lost in a way you can’t ever be lost under the blasting Florida sun.

The boys will eventually grow to soldiers and disappear into the fog of jungle, or slide away into narcotic mists, or stalk the miasma of manhood. We girls hang back a bit. We still want to believe in magic. We want to believe we will fall in love and turn into princesses.

"Greyhound Station Stop" -- Becoming Memory Series

 Greyhound Station Stop

We had waited until he finally came home to leave for my seventeenth birthday trip to the Keys. Now we’re all in the car like any family on vacation, my mother driving, he being too drunk and ugly. I’m not usually the object of his ugliness, but I was just caught smoking the week before, and he is haranguing me about it. He leans over the front seat toward me, sweaty forearm below his checkered shirt. His face is like a cornered rat’s, his broad nose distorted, the teeth smoker’s yellow. 

“I don’t care how goddamn smart you are,” he slurs, warming to his topic. “This is just the first step. The first goddamn step. Next thing you know, you’ll be knocked up.” I focus on the tiny foam of spittle forming in the corner of his mouth to block out the words. My thirteen-year-old brother rolls down his window, maybe pleased to not be the subject of attack for once.

My father bends toward my mother. “Knocked up, Thelma,” he says in his louder, needling voice, as if she can’t hear him from a foot away. “Then what will that do for your darling daughter? Your smart-ass darling daughter?” She focuses on the road.

He turns back to me. “What will that do for your goddamn collage plans? Huh? You can’t go to college knocked up. How wudja like them apples?” I’m surprised when he sloppily swings the back of his hand towards me, something he has never done before. His aim is way off.

“Balls,” he mutters to himself and slowly repositions his body to face front. Everyone keeps looking out their respective windows.

Whether it’s his idea or my mother’s, I’ve lost track, but she pulls into the Greyhound bus station when we reach Ft. Pierce so he can go back. I’m willing to just let it go, to go on, to have the trip we’re supposed to have as eventually we will when he sobers up. But she opens the trunk and the gray suitcase so he can get the only thing he really wants to take with him—the fifth of Jim Beam wrapped in a pair of underwear—while we continue south without him.

Copyright, 2016, Linda S. Buckmaster