Carolee: I would rent a house somewhere by the sea and invite my poet friends and put us up for a couple weeks a few times a year. We would study. We would workshop. We would read aloud our own work and our favorite "famous" poems. We would eat. We would drink. We would stomp around on the beach. We would grow old(er) together, for sure, blessed by one another's company. And maybe we would become better poets. Geordie: Today, I’d like to study with Kay Ryan. I love her flowing, witty, meaningful poems that tumble down musically like a waterfall. I try in some poems of my own to emulate this style; I admire the wit and brevity. Also, she seems like ‚real people.‛ C. Albert: Romare Bearden is my favorite collage artist, though he is no longer living. Tom: Were he alive, I would study with Robert Lowell, whom I consider the master of the synthesis of style and form and content. There are a number of calligraphers I would love to study with — too numerous to name — because of their discipline and attention to quality, consistency, and their innovations, which are informed by intense practice and mastery of the craft. I wish Luciana Souza could teach me to sing as she does. Kim: I would love to study with Campbell McGrath, but since this is just fantasy, I’d love to have had the opportunity to learn from Gregory Chaucer, John Donne, William Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, or Edna St. Vincent Millay. Gary: I learn from everybody, but if I could converse with T.S. Eliot about the construction of ‚Prufrock‛ and ‚Waste Land,‛ I think I could gain a great deal for my own poetry. The other person I’d like as a teacher is John Ashbery, since I haven’t much of any clue what he’s doing and would love to hear him try to explain it. Rob: I studied under Ginsberg in the ’90s. It was like being at the foot of a god. No one else comes to mind now . . .
‚Antique Buttons Pattern‛ By E. A. Hanninen, 2010