Ode with Robert Hass

Rounding up today - Wednesday 9th July - with Robert Hass in workshop for the Ode. I had never come across this name before but he is well known and he comes with a pedigree in writing. To say that this was actually 'a workshop' is stretching a point as it was only two hours from 2pm to 4pm, but we did cover a lot.
Pablo Neruda wrote odes to watermelons, typography and cats. It would seem that a poem of praise is something between a celebration and a prayer, an ancient impulse to get in the right relation to forms of creativity and benign forms of power. This notion was to be explored through conversation and in writing exercises with our Poet in Residence. Anyway, that is what the Festival said they hoped to achieve.
We had a good discussion on as much as we could cover and I would have preferred to spend much more timed with him. We ranged from Gerald Manley Hopkins, Alice Oswald, Pablo Neruda and Frank O'Hara. Neruda's Ode to an Onion was a strange one to at least one person although I thought that it could be considered quite odd, I liked and thought it had merit.
With all of his input, questions and discussion there was hardly any time for writing, but he asked to write a list of four or five items and then with time running out to enlarge on one of them.
I wrote these few lines:-
An old garden gate, swollen with recent rain is wedged tight
requiring that extra shove to allow me into that other place.
I feel where hands have smoothed the touching point
made smoother by more hands but where the grain is both proud and
indented these mini-corrugations note the passing of all of us.
I have other notes to work on later, but it was so short a time. Yes, I did get from it many ideas and thoughts to pursue.
The crux for me was simply not enough time, but was this a sampler for 2015 where more time will be allowed? Maybe four hours and maybe three mornings of four hours each or even a whole day. I think that the committee need to think about this. However, was it worthwhile for me? Yes and I took away certain things to consider.
Robert Hass is a 'gent' and a very knowledgeable one too. I enjoyed it immensely and it was so good being again with like minded people.