Poets Teaching Poets during New Poetry Class

“Poets Teaching Poets,” a new, six-week poetry class will begin Tuesday, September 18.

“Poems arrive. They hide in feelings and images, in weeds and delivery vans, daring us to notice and give them form with our words. They take us to an invisible world where light and dark, inside and outside meet.” Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge, author of Poemcrazy

This class will offer an opportunity to generate new poems inspired by our reading and discussion of a different contemporary poet each week. We will focus on how the poems work. Emphasis will be on exploration and questioning, in order to take risks with our writing. As always, the class environment is one of encouragement and support.

All are welcome, including those who are new to poetry. The classes will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Public Library, with JoEllen Moldoff as Facilitator.

JoEllen Moldoff has been teaching poetry and memoir writing on Orcas for several years. She coordinates the Writer’s Roundtable each month.

Fee: $15 payable at the first session to the instructor. This covers copying costs, as well as a donation to the library. It is not necessary to register. Just show up!

The Secret

by Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.