The End of Poetry and a Lack of Sleep

The second course has ended. Poetry and Ekphrasis with our dear Julia Kasdorf is no more. In the course of 4 weeks, we read ekphrastic works from Homer to Browning, and created 8 poems of our own. From those 8, we chose 5 to revise, and 3 of those revisions will be put in an anthology. Tonight we're having a poetry reading for the other students and staff. It's been a good class, and we had a lot of fun in it.
And then there's the saga of the art students... The students in Matt's drawing class are all either sleeping, or wishing they were. Their final project wasn't assigned til a few days ago, and it was a big undertaking. They were supposed to draw a scene from Orvieto, and it had to be big. Several of them are taller than I am, and much wider. Because of the size and detail of their work, 7 out of 12 of the students were up all night working on them. I woke up at 7 to find that Annie wasn't in her bed. I wandered downstairs to see if I could find her, and I discovered a whole slew of people who hadn't slept yet. Their drawings are beautiful, but needless to say they are all exhausted.

Tomorrow morning, Carissa, Hannah and I will leave for Venice. We'll be met by Rene Seindal, a kayaking contact of mine, who will be putting us up for the weekend. He'll be taking us kayaking, which will be wonderful (though probably cold) and showing us around the city. I'd say there's not much better than a virtually free weekend in Venice. If we're lucky, we might also get to take part in a Venetian rowing session. We'll see how it goes.
When we return, Dr. Skillen will be here again, preparing to commence the third class of the semester: Dante. It'll be a big change from writing poetry, but hopefully a good one.