The Pine Tree State…

…aka Maine is where you reside during the residencies of the Stonecoast Low Residency MFA program, and it’s beautiful. See?The workshops, like the poetry one I was there to lead, take place in the Stone House, where the rooms all have evocative names, like this one, The Wolf’s Den Porch. Though not all the rooms have shag carpeting on the ceiling–my workshop just lucked out:

The best thing about Stonecoast, though, to be sort of cornball for a moment, was not the scenery or the setting, but the people–the students and the faculty members, like the ones pictured here, in the parking lot of the sumptuously appointed Knight’s Inn, formerly “The Maineline”…

…including (L to R) me, David Anthony Durham, Tim Seibles, Liz Hand, Nicole Cooley, Todd Boss and Deb Marquart. Thanks to Robin Talbot, Heather Magaw, and Annie Finch for all their organizational skill and vision, and to Allen’s Seafood in Harpswell for being so quintessentially Maine-y…

…and to all the lobsters who gave their lives for the final Community Dinner on Sunday evening. I didn’t have one because eating creatures is not my thing, but I hear they were delish: