Last year, I came back from the Frost Place Writing Intensive blazing with the will to write. Vievee Francis had unclogged something in me--that blob of grief that had been silencing me since the move from Harmony--and since then, for the entire year, I've been a faucet. Turn me on and the water gushes out and overflows the sink. I've written most of two manuscripts in a year, plus many other uncollected/uncollectable poems. Hundreds of poems. In truth, I've had to purposely turn off the faucet, or at least reduce it to a trickle when I've been editing and teaching, so I can focus on paying tasks and/or avoid killing myself by overwork.

All this is to say that I came into this year's Writing Intensive with my bait bucket full of fish. I expected to write fluently, I expected to be wriggling in my seat, I expected to be hunting for kraken. And I did all of that.

This year's class was led by Maudelle Driskell. Taking a class with her is like taking a class with a crocodile. She clamps hold of your leg and she won't let go. Every person in the room went home with a chunk of flesh missing. She ran us a through a few drafts, and then she flung out individual assignments: To the person who writes lovely, first-person fishing poems, "You! Write from the point of view of a princess!" To the person who writes patient, forgiving poems: "You! Write about the ugliest nastiest thing you can think of!" To the person with formal dexterity: "You! Write a prose poem!" To me: "You! Write something sexually explicit!"

Now Maudelle knows I am not a prude. More importantly, I know I am not a prude. But I certainly have not been writing sexually explicit work . . . and on purpose. I've liked retaining a few wordless things in my life. And of course writing about sex drops any other, invisible, non-writing participant into the boiling water. So where does one draw the line, when it comes to privacy? . . . blah blah blah, too bad. Maudelle scrunched up her nose and lanced me with her beetle-eyed stare. "Get to work, Potter!"

So I wrote a poem about anal sex. I had to concentrate all of my attention on delineating a fraught physical act via two invented yet familiar characters. I had to jettison the cogitator, the observer, and concentrate on the doer. The experience of writing this draft was weird and difficult and wonderful, and the poem will probably be a keeper. I'm excited about it, excited to have been pushed down this murky well. Maudelle knew what she was doing when she bossed me around. I'm beyond grateful.