David Wagoner wears denim buttons-ups unbuttoned to the third button with different colored turtlenecks beneath. A Native American inspired (perhaps made) belt buckle holds his pants tight with the dignity of eternal youth. He still does his hair everyday, snowy white it holds close to his head, combed with an unmatched slickness. His glasses are large, beautiful relics from the 70′s, if they were tinted they would immediately be the most fashionable sunglasses within 30 miles – that’s him, that’s David Wagoner; even in his old age he’s on the verge of being completely fashionable. His poetry still is.

Legends are legendary because of their elusiveness. As the recent attention on Tiger Woods has revealed, a legend rarely remains a legend when put directly in the spotlight, or when the facts of their life are explicitly revealed. To be a legend one must master the art of paraphrase, solitude, and performance. For the past three weeks I’ve been taught by a legend; a poet born in 1926 who worked with and outlived the likes of Theodore Roethke, Richard Hugo, Elizabeth Bishop, and countless others. David Wagoner has mastered the ability to remain a master. The kind of person who can make a silly remark and yet, somehow, it’s received as a piece of backwards-wisdom; intentionally said in a silly way so that we’ll learn an important lesson.

“Stay alive,” he said wisely and not without a grim skepticism. “If you plan to write good poetry, you must stay alive.” I’ve scribbled these wise axioms all throughout my notebook. I take them, at first, as complete truth. Old folks, especially successful ones such as David, have an innate conviction that, unless you’re simply not listening, forces you to believe – even if momentarily – everything they say..

“Theodore Roethke was in this room,” David says, crossing one leg over the other, nimble even in his eighties, “when he was arrested for threatening a class with a can opener; the state police came and arrested him. He was incoherent, of course.” His voice is musical, it booms like thunder but soothes like cough syrup. He told us that to master poetry we must master the same abilities a classical singer does: pitch, tone, timbre, rhythm. “Two floors below us Allen Ginsberg performed one of his first readings of the poem ‘Howl.’ This building, Parrington Hall, is haunted by the spirits of many poets, Roethke, Ginsberg, and so many more. Roethke instructed me in this hall. That was back when instructors wore suits and ties and coats, and took their suit coats off as soon as they got the chance.” He always finishes his stories of old with a chuckle that says we could never understand and that we probably think he’s trying to be funny.

There’s certainly something demystifying about being in David’s presence – he insists upon being called David – not unlike if you learned the science behind love it would become less magical. So many people seem to believe that the ability to write poetry is some natural, magical gift that can’t be taught – honed, perhaps, but not taught. David seems to think it’s a bit of natural ability, but that there’s also a science to it. “You’re poetry is not sacred in this room,” he said on the first day. “We will tear it apart.” One of the first things he tore apart was the prose poem, something I hold rather dear to my heart. “It used to be that poetry and prose were completely separate forms, that’s no longer the case. I don’t see what you could gain from writing a poem without intentional line breaks. And either use punctuation correctly or don’t use it at all. You live in an era where there are no rules,” he says. “Remember that.”

A few minutes later he tells us not to capitalize the first letter of a line unless it’s the beginning of a sentence, and a couple classes later not to part an attributive adjective and it’s noun with a line break, then he tells us not to have more than twice as many attributive adjectives as we have lines. One moment he tells us there are no rules, then the next he lays them out clearly. And of course he makes the suggestion that we write out a poem in prose first, no line breaks, no poetic constraints – just write and write until we have no more to say on the subject. Even the oldest, wisest, most successful poets can be a walking contradiction, maybe that makes a poet. It’s humbling and yet a little scary, too. How would you feel if Jesus came to you, a devoted christian, and started saying hypocritical things and making confused suggestions? I suppose your faith would likely falter, but at the same time you’d realize that Jesus wasn’t that much better than you – what’s stopping you from being a modern day Jesus?

After a pregnant pause in which the fourteen or so students in the room glance slowly around at each other, he says, “Every time I say something a little voice in the back of my head says,” he reaches back and touches the back of his head as if he knows the voice’s exact location, “’yeah, but the opposite’s also true.’” And he immediately redeems himself of his previous contradictions. He’s quite possibly the most coherent human being I’ve ever met. Unfaltering in his beliefs, yet acknowledging of the fact that they’re likely wrong – everyone’s likely wrong.

David often spends 3-5 second intervals between statements, he creates these long and somber silences, not quite awkward so much as meditative. The subtext of his silence says, “You should all be thinking of ideas right now greater than the one I just had.” They’re intimidating silences in which I often scribble ideas in all caps in my notebook – I’ve recently learned that my writing is somewhat legible if written in all caps. He often counters his booming criticisms with a tiny chirp of praise; he knocks you off your feet and doesn’t grab you by the hand and pull you back up, but merely whispers in your ear, “I suggest you get back up.” He takes confidence and energy.

Coming into David Wagoner’s knowledgeable arms I was excited, thinking he must hold the skeleton key to poetic success. After his class I would be able to open any door, anywhere, and turn whatever was inside to art. His age, his reverence, his reputation – his first book of poems was published at 22 and he hasn’t stopped since; he’s well into his eighties now. All of these seemed to be evidence that he would be able to turn me into a successful poet. Of course, this was a naïve, overly excited, and headstrong belief.

Masters can teach us what they did to master a thing, but masters are considered masters because they did something striking and unique – something never done before. No one can teach you how to do something that’s never been done before.

“A plains Indian,” he once said, “does not think the same way that a woods Indian does. If you place a woods Indian on the plains he will feel vulnerable; a plains Indian in the woods will feel trapped.” The Indian out of his comfort zone will feel fear, the Indian must turn that fear to positive energy and will himself to innovation, and always say to himself, “Yeah, but the opposite’s also true.”

David once said his wife calls the following poem his “cash cow.” It’s been reproduced in multiple languages, in thousands of mediums, and read in thousands of different places; in keeping to this tradition, I am reproducing it here, for you, just in case you get lost:

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

Do you know what it’s like when you have a glass of orange juice, finish it, then neglect to wash the glass and refill it with apple juice? The acidic qualities of the orange juice, stray bits of pulp, they all come through with the apple and make a strange cocktail. That’s how I envision lovers upon lovers in a lifetime. The next becoming more and more of a cocktail with bitter—and sweet—remains of the lover before. The final being nowhere near as pure as the first. Or maybe nowhere near as pure as the third, or fourth. Perhaps after the first couple I still retained the energy to wash the glass before pouring a new one. But my energy, I fear, is depleting. I’m on my way to drinking cocktail after cocktail.

This is the third time I’ve listened to Pet Sounds today, it’s 11:44, I’ve been awake something like four hours. Three times in four hours. A bow without resin. Powder flying, strings scratching, notes resound with impurity.

Adam ordered me a sandwich. That’s the kind of grace I need. Shantell smiled bigger than big, that’s the kind of grace I need. I slept on a cold pillow that smelled like someone else’s hair. I opened the window to hear the inconsistent drops of the gutter. A mountain of pillows laid beside me all night trying to breathe. A fan whistled a monotone tune it wished was a lullaby. Vodka nourished me. The blankets could be held tight but not tight enough.

I dreamt of grocery shopping, I think. I rolled and rolled, over and over. I dreamt, I think, of grocery shopping. The domestic kind, “Do we need this, honey?” That sort. “No, we’ve already got some.” You know the kind. “And what about this?” With the inevitable, “Well, is it on sale? We don’t really need it.” And the produce. Looking for the unbruised fruits but finding none. Settling, finally, for only the mildly bruised. Settling for the mildly bruised.

Here’s a secret. Sometimes I walk grocery stores late at night, early in the morning, mid-day. I don’t purchase a thing. I just walk down the aisles to see how much all the items wish I’d purchase them. I like the way their packages try to lure me in—they just want me so bad. Except the cheese, the cheese never tries too hard. It smells funny and is wrapped in clear plastic. But it doesn’t need to look nice, right? It’s cheese, it knows someone will buy it. Same with the milk. And the eggs. It’s only the packaged cereals, snacks, crackers, cookies—the things we don’t need that want me to buy them so badly. I think I dreamt of grocery shopping last night.

Let us quickly assess the state of my being:

Are you here?
Are you?
Are you breathing?
Slowly.
Did you sleep well?
Define well.
Who woke you up this morning?
Am I awake?
What time is it?
11:56
What day is it?
January 9, 2010

Anywhere but here would be nice,
But maybe what I mean is I quit,
Or maybe let’s fall and only sleep,
And let’s stop trying—
Only let come what may.
I mean, really, anywhere but here still
Has me me me
Perhaps I mean anywhere but here
Or there—nowhere.

Like that, they break my fourth wall. They gaze directly into the camera and break the boundaries between observer and actor. My suspension of disbelief is now increasingly difficult to sustain. This is the feeling I get when people look at me and I’m not expecting it. I feel they are intruding upon my world of make believe. The director, I think, did not instruct you to do that. Cut!

And yet, suspiciously, despite my perception of the world, Erin says this of me:
“You’re one of the only people I know who’s actually living.”

At 11:26 pm I see a Denny’s. I turn the car into the parking lot and park by the front doors. A large neon sign is brightly lit in the night sky that says “24 Hours.” It pulls me in like a fly to be zapped. I sit at the bar and order an Oreo milkshake. I have this “dairy thing,” Karli calls it. In fact, she has so assertively coined it my “dairy fetish.” But I can’t argue otherwise. There’s something about yogurt, ice cream, milk, egg nog, cheese, pizza, and basically any other combination of dairy product that just soothes my innards. Milkshakes especially. I like to go to all-nite diners and order a milkshake and write. Many people might consider it an atypical place to derive inspiration, but they aren’t actually living.

I know what Erin meant when she told me I was the only person she knows who is actually living. But really, it’s just that I love the general magnificence of things: an old man sipping black coffee; this is beautiful. His life, his history, whatever-the-fuck, it doesn’t matter. Right now he’s a faded grey man sipping coffee at Denny’s at a time when no one ought to be drinking coffee. His flannel shirt is wrinkled. This man is a mobile tableau, the Mona Lisa in real-life, in Lynnwood, WA, in po-dunk butt-fuck nowhere, in your chair now.

“You’re one of the only people I know who’s actually living.”

A photo of me clad in vest and trim pants, festive buttons pinned to my arms, dancing and singing with my guitar amongst a crowd of passersby evoked this response from Erin. I was living in the middle of the city, awake in a crowd of sleepwalkers. I digress; it’s not so much that I’m living and no one else is. I make movements and am aware of them as I make them, or at least I try to be. I consciously begin making the memory as I am simultaneously experiencing it. I guess this means I’m really living, but I’m no more alive than you.

Where do my interests begin to conflict? Am I both the director of this film, and an actor in it? I think this is the confusion I seek to reconcile. I’ve often tried to define myself on one end of the observer-participator spectrum, but maybe this spectrum is complete bullshit.

For that matter, who says I can’t be the director, screenwriter, actor, and composer of this film? No one? Good. I don’t anticipate simply living my life is likely to make me much money, but hey, it’s a start. And really, I’m no more alive than you.