Everyone wants to know, "How was your semester?" and they actually listen to you when you respond. It's not like my undergrad days at Bob Dole Training Camp in Central Florida where you could tell people, "I have Cancer, how are you?" and they'd say, "Just fine, thanks." Bennington cares, which sounds really cheesy and frou-frou, but it's true. It's the one thing about this place that keeps it from feeling like many other programs (or, as I've heard them called, MFA Factories).

We had the first lecture today: poet Robert Polito on novelist Jim Thompson. Required reading: A Hell of a Woman. The book was hell. Hated it but loved that I read it because the darker side of human nature comes out in it. At Bennington, we're required to go to 3 out of 4 lecture series (each guest faculty gives 3 individual lectures). Polito lectured on Thompson's life, his biography, a lecture suited to both the poet and fiction writer. We're writing about the lived life, its hell of women and men, and its heaven as well, I suppose. Polito's material - his approach to detailing Thompson's life - was certainly engaging, and the feel of 100 brains in Tishman Hall working overtime on the issues of light and darkness in art and life still astounds me. Polito has set a ruminating vibe through everyone even if it would be fun to consign a Thompson book to Hell.

After the lecture, I met with my pod, a green-bean word for the five students working with one professor. 2 pods make a workshop. I'm excited about the work my pod has done. Their workshop material is strong and not because they've submitted their strongest work. It's because our writing is tackling the seemingly seamless world of contemporary poetry. From the word go, April Bernard (author of Psalms and fortunately my instructor this semester) says, "You have to make the most of me if I'm going to teach you anything." She's invested in helping, teaching, writing. It's more than a job, but a life. April is typical among the professors here: she cares way too much about writing to be nonsensical.

I saw Donald Hall walking campus today. He's not an imposing figure, but he doesn't blend in either. Mr. Hall stands out subtly by virtue of his art. Both times I've been here he's come to give talks or readings. He's reading other people's poems in addition to his own (from Without) later. I can't wait. I just want to say thanks, if I can find the courage.

After dinner (I'm sticking to rice and salad), I walked back to my dorm to read, nap, relax, but ended up sitting in a wooden lawn chair underneath this huge, hugging tree for a half-hour or so. As I smoked my Marlboro Light, I admired the great beauty of Bennington architecture. I'm talking about more than our buildings, which are stunning at times, but our social makeup. There's little posturing and so few pretenders here that I'm not sure if there really are any. I find most people at Bennington rather genuine, especially for writers. We're all away from our jobs, our kids, and our homes, finding our nests, our wings.

Under this tree, in the dusk-dusted rain, beneath the fleeing clouds, damn me if I don't feel like I'm flying.

One of the more common questions here is, "What day is it?" We're in a vortex, where time stops and starts in weird jaunts. A vortex obscured by the fact that we're not sleeping (and if we are, not well), we're eating rice, salad, or humus because we're afraid of what the cafeteria might cook up next, and we're generally too excited and busy to notice the days passing by. It's not ignorance as much as it is celebration.

Workshop was incredible. We workshopped one fiction writer and one poet, and the amount of work we got through was amazing. We talked a little about theory. In a flurry that becomes her, April went to the blackboard and wrote "If there is a knife in your heart, then there is no precision in your mind," which she attributed to Confucius via translator Marianne Moore. We're impassioned about these workshop pieces, but we're analyzing them critically, forgetting the initial passion and seeing how they work and how they don't.

Afterwards, I sat with Rachel Barenblat outside the Commons building, a huge mansion, and mellowed out while we waited for Donald Hall to commence his reading of "Other People's Poems." Alice Mattison (author of Men Giving Money and Women Yelling) came by looking for Mr. Hall. She stopped and chatted for a while, and I asked about her friend Jane Kenyon (author of Otherwise), who died about the time I came to poetry. Alice grew quiet and introspective but talked openly. There was a joy about her which I can only attribute to the fact of knowing and loving someone so well that peace is imminent.

Donald Hall read lots of Yeats and an as-yet-unpublished poem by Jane Kenyon and ended with Geoffrey Hill. I nearly cried from the startling beauty of that piece, its refrain, its crisis of belief. I knew I couldn't take a reading of his newest book, Without, which happens on Sunday (don't ask me how I know what day it is).

After dinner (humus, pita, and a turkey sandwich) I napped my ass off. I had a weird, psychotic dream in which this guy I once knew was trying to kill me, but Cher and Shirley MacLaine intervened on my behalf. Cher can really kick some butt. I woke up disturbed and was persuaded to go to the Brick Cafe and dance the night away. This was the residency's first "official" party, so with Cher in mind I blackened my eyebrows, donned lipstick and a pink feather boa, and went off into the rain-littered night.

The boa was a hit. I broke a lousy chair by sitting on it (uuumph!) and falling right on through, and Madonna ruled the jubilant evening.

I wrote a little today, inspired by blood. Liam Rector (director of the program and author of American Prodigals: Poems) gave a lecture on T.S. Eliot, whose wife, apparently, had a continual period and that's why Eliot's poetry is devoid of sexuality. Of course, though, the subject of menstruation came up, and Jill McCorkle (author of Final Vinyl Days and Other Stories) said, "Maybe she just SAID she had her period." I think she's got a point. And then one of the men said that during his younger days as a biker he got off on performing cunnilingus on women who were menstruating. Is this appropriate? Is it disgusting? I'm not sure, but it really goes to showing ya how open-minded and weird and funky our discussions here can become.

I'm re-re-re-re-reading Mark Doty's My Alexandria and getting choked up as I always do on his poem, "Fog." Such a smart poem, and though he's come out with 3 books since, I do so hope he'll read from that one here. He's giving 3 lectures and a reading, and every time I go by the mailboxes, I glance to see if his is still full, so I'll know when he arrives on campus. This may sound a little obsessive, but it's really not. I'm just inspired by poets who inspire beauty.

I met with April Bernard after dinner (good hot soup, sandwich, humus and pita bread). It's time for me to forget that I know what I know and learn from the beginning everything again. I'm a child of this newer modernism. Mine are the temples of Ashbery, Graham, Doty, Bishop, and Dickinson. I've read earlier poets, but I haven't really studied them in the Bennington way - similarly with form and meter. April met with me for about an hour, and we talked about breath and the iambic line. She is inspiringly smart, undaunted, and encouraging. I hope to forget who I am and live the Elizabethan life this next semester.

Which means, of course, more make-up and less bullshit.

After this, I went to see my friend Elizabeth Knapp in her decidedly more modern dorm room. She was, all be damned, napping, but I woke her, and we talked. She's an amazing writer who entered with me last January, and Bennington would be difficult without her. We kept in touch throughout the semester, discussing writing, our professor Thomas Sayers Ellis author of Take Three), and our lives. Last night, though, she recited a ghazel she's written to me and read aloud from Frank Bidart's book, Desire. She should read books on tape. Elizabeth is a calming soul able to put into place and analyze the fears I'm having about starting over with form and meter and life and love. I read some of her workshop material (exciting). We talked about what we've read (Jorie Graham is the bomb) and then decided to get off campus for some REAL food (for real!).

The rice long since past my palette, the humus has become hum-drum. Unfortunately, it's my food of choice, no matter how anti-Bennington it is in taste.

I've never had a horrible experience at Bennington. Never. Never had a bad thing to say about one of its students. And I'm not about to say anything that is bad, per se. As I was told yesterday, there's only authentic and inauthentic.

During Part 2 of Benjamin Cheever's (author of The Plagiarist : A Novel and son of John Cheever) lecture entitled "Bad Books," Mr. Cheever discussed The Education of Little Tree ostensibly by Forest Carter, but written in fact by Asa Carter, an ex-KKK member who obviously couldn't sleep nights and had nothing better to do. So he wrote this bad, bad, bad book. Now, what makes it bad in my estimation is the fact that the writing is unintelligible, the narration is intrusive and forgetful, and the characters are flat imitations of a horrible stereotype. Mr. Cheever thought this, too, as we started looking at the text and examining its language, diction, and structure. After his lecture (about 30 minutes, short, boo), one of my fellow Benningtonians began defending the book. She said, "I read this when it first came out, before we knew a Klansmen had written it. And I like it." She went on to say that she thought it was indeed a good book and wanted to take issue with his labeling it bad. Another woman said that we shouldn't have words like bad and good and that authenticity was the issue. Of course, I think both women were wrong. Shitty writing is shitty, and good writing is...

However, Mr. Cheever wasn't well prepared for his lectures, which despite being entertaining and informative weren't entirely thought through. Needless to say, though, I was embarrassed by my fellow students' approach to his lecture.

I was so infuriated, I ate lunch very quickly (veggie chili, yum yum, kudos finally to the chef), then darted towards the Barn (it really does look like one) for my workshop. This workshop is sooo amazing. I rarely get upset at anything, and when I do, it sort of festers in my head (my therapist and I are working on this). But who needs therapy with a writing workshop? This afternoon calmed and energized me. I'm tackling issues in my work by reading and tackling the same issues in other writers' work. It's invaluable, fun work to be doing. April Bernard and Alice Mattison care so much about writing, its craft as well as its point. That sort of caring and passion is beautiful to behold.

After workshop, after dinner, I signed up to give a student reading. The readings are upstairs in the dining hall. They used to be in one of the dorm living rooms, but it became crowded and people tended to fall asleep on the couches mid-story or mid-poem. (I even snored. I felt horrible). Each student gets about 5 minutes to read, and it's mixed genres, anything goes. The reading went well, I got 2 poems in, and the response was pretty good. It helped reading in front of people - I'll probably end up having that poem workshopped because I noticed so many things I need help with during the reading.

After the student readings, two of our esteemed faculty read in the slightly higher-class Deane Carriage Barn. Thomas Sayers Ellis (a man of great funk, great noise, great poetry) brought the house down with his reading. I just finished studying with Tom last semester, and I'm always inspired by his work, which he sent to all of us working with him. Tom makes Bennington feel less like a student-teacher thing and more like a compatriot thing. Tom read his music, and I heard drums beating, back and forth, talking, carrying on dialogue with words, with the space between words.

O that I were a woman! I'd bear his children in the marketplace!

The night ended with a "Fuck the Rain" party. Armed with cut-out trash-bags (armor) and squirt guns (weaponry) and plenty of liquor (both armor and weaponry). The traditional Tiki torches were lit, chairs were set up around them, music set the groove, and we funked the rain all night long. Well, some of us did.

I fell asleep on a couch, the music of speech and jazz full in my ear, the Bennington breeze full on my body as I floated to the land of never-never-never.

It's official. The residency is halfway over, and Bennington hates its ill-prepared speakers. Robert Polito was the doll of the first five days, expressing versatility in his movement from non-fiction biography to reading Frank Bidart's decidedly difficult book, Desire. But poor Ben Cheever, whose humor is outstanding, prepared very little for his lecture series. Bennington students are good at sensing weakness.

For the first time since I arrived last Thursday, I made it off campus and into Bennington proper. Rachel Barenblat and I went to "All Days and Onions" which boasts a fabulous dinner menu. However, it was Tuesday, and they only serve dinner Wednesday through Saturday or something odd like that. I'm used to restaurants that are open till 1 am. You know? TGI Friday's, Denny's, hell, even IHOP would be a blessing. But Rachel and I got our apple cake (delicious) and ice coffee (to match the weather) and had the best meal since arriving, not saying much, I suppose. I was surprised to hear that smoking in any public place is against Vermont state law. I don't think they could ever pass something like that in dear old Florida, where we love our tobacco like we love our drag queens.

On our way out of All Days and Onions (great name for a book of gardening poems, eh?), Rachel noticed a large basket of AIDS-awareness ribbons (the red ones, you know?) and a huge poster explaining what they were. We both thought that great, and on our way back to the college, we saw posters for the Bennington AIDS Relief Project. Bennington isn't the hugest of metropolises. Neither is it the most progressive place I've ever visited. But this was very impressive. My college town in Central Homophobia could never dream of something like this, something intelligent and caring.

After we got back, I went to sleep for a bit. Meaning, I woke up around 9:30, cursing the fact that I missed student and faculty readings. I took my bookbag downstairs (my room, for some reason, is hotter than Hades) and began reading my workshop material. I was blown away by the stuff. On more than a few poems and stories I told the respective authors that if they changed a word, I'd personally hunt them down like the dogs they were. Very good writing, smart and clever. But, alas, I wasn't able to work too long, before Meri Danquah came in and we started chatting. Chatting led to the fact that we were hungry, which led to me in the dorm phone booth trying to find a pizza place that is both open on Tuesdays and delivers after 10:00 at night. Hard find, let me tell you. But then the demi-gods at Domino's saved the day. I ate 4 pieces before realizing that I don't eat Domino's because of its past financial support of anti-abortion causes. Foiled again. Sleep didn't come easily to me that night at 3 am. I really should look for a restaurant named TGI Tums.

The Writing Programs are often packed from 9 am till 10 at night. There may be a spare hour here or there, but largely, if you want to take time off you have to skip something. And it's really frowned upon to miss anything. Wednesday night is the only night the program plans nothing. "No Thing Night" is a Bennington tradition.

This morning Martha Cooley lectured on Chekhov's life and letters. She asked if there are any public figures who are also people of letters these days. Are there any public intellectuals left? (Someone alert Madonna.)

April Bernard said in workshop today, "Be brave. Everyone has it tough. You chose to be a writer, you chose to do the difficult thing. So write the difficult thing." Her impulse is to encourage us towards our fears, to face them, and to write them. It's advice not lightly taken, nor lightly given.

So, thank God Almighty, after lecture, workshops, and lunch, we were free, free at last.

Rachel, Liz, Jill Rierdan, and Kate Moos (one of the best poets in the program) and I met Rachel's husband Ethan just across the New York border at a Japanese place called Yoshi's. The food wasn't great, but anything's better than the Commons (anything). We talked about our lives outside the program, what we do "in real life." Bennington is almost surrealistic in its concept and subversion of time. It's a gorgeous thing where we can forget, as Marie Howe says in a poem of hers, "what the living do." (Link Marie Howe's name to wtld book)

When we got back from dinner, three of our fellow cohorts were dancing in the parking lot, music blaring from one of their cars, arms raised in exultation to the night sky.

I slept out in the living room of my dorm after all the partyers. It was nice to fall asleep amongst the talk, the empty cans, and the spirit of Bennington.

Mark Doty is the belle of Bennington. I've been on Dotywatch since I got here, because I love the man. I love his writing, I love his hair (shaved, kinda Telly Savalas, but handsome, you know?). I love the awful cut the guy got on his forehead from walking carelessly into a surveillance camera. But, I don't love love him, you know, want to spend an eternity in attraction, or anything like that. I just admire the hell out of him. So few heroes in our time. Mr. Doty gave a hot-shit lecture yesterday on the elegy, and I know a few people who lost it, cried, during the lecture. We discussed a Jorie Graham poem, too. How happy am I?

Bennington loves its good lecturers. Mark Doty got a two-minute ovation for his excellent preparation, his sometimes comic and always erudite seminar. Later, Martha Cooley also gave a great lecture on the poetry of Zbiegnew Herbert (author of Mr. Cogito). Later in the evening, both Cooley and Doty read from their latest works. Although I'm a poet, I was totally and completely fascinated by Cooley's book, The Archivist. She reads confidently, clearly, and with emotion. Impressive is not the word. Doty read from some of his prose (coming out soon), and 2 poems from Sweet Machine, only one of which moved me to tears. He read a long poem commissioned by the BBC and in the form of a letter to Walt Whitman. It was conversational, "chatty," as Mr. Doty called it. It lacked some emotional strength, and part of it was exhibitionistic. But it was a good reading. I just wish I was around to hear him read from My Alexandria. Sigh.

After the reading, lots of people grouped up and went bowling. I bailed. I spent an hour and a half reading from In the Company of My Solitude (edited by poets Michael Klein and Marie Howe - love her), which is a collection of writers responding to the AIDS pandemic. Mark Doty's in that one, too.

I just can't get enough.

Exhausted is not the word. It feels like self-exhumation just to wake up. Man, I'm freaking tired.

Mark Doty gave an excellent, if fragmented, lecture on "Fragments as Form," and again got a worthy round of applause. I spent lunch downstairs, away from the Commons food, and got myself a nice greasy hamburger and some of the best fries I've ever had. I usually don't eat meat here at Bennington because it's just SOOOO easy not to. But, exceptions must be made, because a person's got to eat (if not sleep, but we won't get into that and I'm not bitter).

After lunch, workshop commenced. April Bernard gave a lovely 10 minute talk about the Lightning Field out in the Southwest Desert. It's an art exhibit comprised of lightning rods that pass around the electric current when lightning strikes. April compared it to writing -- that most writing is being prepared, honing yourself, sticking it out in the hot desert of non-inspiration until it does strike, and then you're ready for it, ready to use it, ready to make art.

My friend Liz Knapp used this beautiful image in her poem, "The Lightning Field." Liz ends better than I've ever seen a poet end, it really takes my breath away. After dinner last night (I made a goddamn turkey sandwich, mmmmm), Liz had a glass of wine and I was smoking a cigarette downstairs and she said, "Let's write a poem." Not declaratively, more like, "Let's go down the water slide." Let's have some fun. Our friend Rachel Barenblat joined us, and so we have this oddly weird, pleasing poem in three voices.

After din-din, student and faculty readings. I skipped the student readings (again) because I felt sick and bloated. I dreaded the faculty readings because Frank Bidart was coming to give a reading. I like his poetry and wanted to hear him read, but I just knew it was going to be loooooong in my state of exhaustion. I was right, but I didn't fall asleep. Mr. Bidart read for exactly 55 minutes. This astonished everyone. I must admit, I felt like leaving, but some of the faculty were by the door, and I didn't want to get run through or pistol-whipped.

Then of course, came the Party. I wandered around a bit last night, admiring the night air, all that. Then went back to my dorm and played a drinking game, Spoons. I don't drink that often, and I certainly wasn't going to just because someone said, "It's the rule." Especially when I misunderstood the rules and so then lost like every time. It was horrible, but terribly fun, bonding. Around 2, with others still talking around me and K.D. Lang singing her song about constant craving, I fell asleep on one of the couches. Ahhhh, to sleep, if not to dream....

Sleep isn't really sleep at Bennington. It's more like a state of comatose. I don't care WHAT happens outside my room, I'll sleep through it. Someone could carve me bloody and I'd just be snoring away.

Given that, Mark Doty's third and final lecture was a pleasure and a smart cup of coffee rolled into one. His was a response to Harold Bloom's introduction to The Best of the Best American Poetry. This series has been going for about 10 years with David Lehman as the series editor and various guest editors (the first, John Ashbery, as the story goes, suggested the book title be "OK Poems." That's darling). Bloom, as critic and author of The Western Canon, was, I think, a good choice, and he chose to make some pretty interesting assertions. If you haven't got the book, get it. Besides an invaluable compilation of the best poems published in the last decade (and most are stunning work), Bloom gets you thinking about the state of modern American poetry and education as well. He's wrong in some senses, but it's an important argument. Doty's rebuttal was well-planned and well-articulated. At one point, he and Liam Rector took opposite sides of the debate in a denouement or, at the least, a clever evincing of both sides.

And if I never hear it again, I'll be a happy camper. Enough of the brain, my heart has been telling me, and indeed, it's been an emotional ten days. The intensity gathers here and is, in fact, in inverse proportion to the amount of sleep you get.

Everyone's riding high, and so it was a good thing the last dance of the residency was tonight. Of course, I wanted it to be high camp, so I brought out all the stops, all my makeup, all my femininity. I missed the graduation dinner before the party because it takes time to prepare a woman's garb, a woman's look (to be frankly honest, I don't see how women do it, or why they do it. If I were a woman, I wouldn't shave a damn thing off my body.) The fun of drag - the persona, the identity switch from James Hall to something crass and cool like "Betty Crocksucker," - allows other people a more expanded comfort zone. They don't have to be the freaks. I, on the other hand, am more than comfortable in that position. And I didn't buy myself one drink the whole night.

I could be really popular, take my show on the road, maybe even get paid. How would I bill myself? The Drag Queen Poet? The J. Edgar of Bennington? Naw. I'd just be RuPaul's hairy sister.

Beat. It's more than a measurement of rhythm, an onomatopoetic word to describe a foot, a unit of meter. It's how I'm feeling today.

I didn't drink that much last night. In fact, I had one glass of red wine and one wine cooler. I feel freaking hung over, however. I don't know why, because I'm a big boy, and big boys can drink a little more than your average Kate Moss jock types (eat something, will you?).

I was workshopped this morning (at, like, 9:30 in the morning, God knows how I even woke up today). I didn't get a chance to take off my nail polish, so I have this weird blue metallic fringe to my fingers, and I like it, but it's chipping (I'm rough on my hands), and it looks tacky, which is how I feel today.

In any event, workshop went well, and afterwards, I met again with April Bernard. I'm excited to be studying with April, because she's so human, artistic, creative, and poetic. We ate lunch (stuffed shells, not bad, and chocolate mousse, which can never be bad as far as I'm concerned) together and constructed a book list. I'm reading lots of Shakespeare, Donne, Tennyson, sonnets, anything in iambic. I'm going back to the roots and learning all over again, because I need to, not put last semester behind me, but put it ahead of me.

Graduation is in less than an hour. Marie Howe is the grad speaker, and I know it will be beautiful, because she's beautiful. And beauty is truth, and truth beauty, as who said? Blake, Yeats, Keats? Oh, it's been too long.

I leave tomorrow morning for Orlando (110 degree weather, can't wait) to see my best friend, whose name is Chi, which means "the breath of life." I certainly need a breath or two after climbing this hilly terrain, and life inside Bennington isn't really life with all its attendant realities of pain and the day-to-day. Bennington is a retreat into expression, so it isn't removed from reality or anything like that. It's just a stopover, a way-station into art, into something that helps us put our lives (all of us, not just Benningtonians) into a creative, artistic, and real expression. Beauty. Truth.

I'm going to sleep all the way to Florida.