Small engine repair. . .

"Learn the Arts, Double the Madness!"

Ok, so I've been home from Maine for almost a week now. First, let me just say that the conference was awesome and Maine is gorgeous. My birthday was great- I couldn't have asked to spend my 25th in a more beautiful place with nicer people. Being in this great place with a whole bunch of artists and writers really got my poetic juices flowing. I wrote a lot. Being in the woods and not working allowed me the time and space that I needed to write. Not having my computer with me meant that I had to write the old fashioned way- in my journal.



Anyway, first, about the conference itself:

The Conference on the Great Mother and the New Father (GMC) was stared by Robert Bly over 30 years ago. My understanding is that the conference was started for the purpose of gathering together talented and interested men and women to take a soulful journey together through mythology, storytelling, music, art, poetry and community. It's not really a conference, but more of a summer camp for adults. The theme of this year's conference was Sufism and particularly focused on the poetry of Rumi and Hafez. Right now Robert Bly is in the process of translating Hafez (which is one reason that the conference focused on the Sufis). Before this, I had never heard of either of these poets and actually knew very little about Sufism. You may have heard of Whirling Dervishes. . . but like me had no idea what a dervish was or why they were whirling. Well, now I know. I think.

In addition to the Sufi stuff (which was actually only a small part of the conference) there were a ton of poets, both young and old, artists, music and dancing. My favorite poet was probably Tony Hoagland. His poems were funny but heartfelt and although I don't usually buy poetry, I bought his book. . . I also particularly loved Gioia Timpanelli (pronounced Joy-a), who is this amazing storyteller and the lovely background music provided by David Whetstone on sitar and Marcus Wise on tabla. Do you know how great it is to hear a lovely story being told or poem being read with a sitar? Well, let me just tell you that it is great. The sitar adds this dreamy, almost surreal quality to everything . . . I'll add some thoughts from my journal soon . . .