Having a good time in Port Townsend. The Wooden Boat festival was happening this past weekend, so the town has been very busy: streets jammed with cars, restaurants full. The weather has been amazing: clear blue skies, high 70's to low 80's, shimmering water, a light refreshing breeze. And the sailboats out on the water are just gorgeous: many of them dating from the early 1900's. PT really is a sea-town.

K and G's place is lovely and quiet and surrounded by tall trees. They have created a gorgeous garden around the two buildings. Sleeping in the upstairs guest room is like being in a tree house. Unfortunately, I have not done much writing on the novel at all. Instead a few poem ideas are coming, and I've been working on some poem revisions. Mostly, I've been reading. But that's okay, reading is a form of writing.

One of the books I brought along with me is Charles Baxter's The Art of Subtext, from the Graywolf "The Art of Series." It's a pretty good read, and though he is writing about fiction, I think much of what he says applies to all forms of creative writing. How beyond the plot, the things that make a book stay with us, haunt us, are difficult to desribe: "the implied, the half-visible, the unspoken."

more later . . .