The Magic of MacDowell

My biggest fear, when I first let myself into Wood Studio, my cabin in the New Hampshire woods belonging to the MacDowell Artists’Colony, was that I would not be able to write. Never before had I been given whole days of space and privacy, with no domestic responsibilities, in which to invoke my muse, or to attempt to—what if the words wouldn’t come?

Two weeks later, with thirty original poems, five translations, and two prose pieces under my belt, I find myself a passionate advocate of all artists’colonies in general, and of MacDowell in particular. I believe all artists should be permitted to avail themselves of such opportunities, and especially women like myself, who are constantly fighting the demands of their families in order to find time to write.

The MacDowell colony was among the earliest of its kind. It was founded in 1908 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and widow of composer Edward MacDowell (1860-1908), best known for his piano piece “To a Wild Rose.” Edward believed his creativity had flourished in the beautiful setting of Hillcrest Farm, their summer property in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and it was his dream to offer other artists a similar experience. Marian set about making that dream a reality, and spent the rest of her life fund-raising for the Colony and promoting its mission. MacDowell now lists more than six thousand artists as former Fellows, including such notables as Thornton Wilder, James Baldwin and Alice Walker.

MacDowell developed a model that has since been successfully followed by many other such colonies scattered throughout the fifty states, ranging from the famous, eclectic ones like Yaddo (Founded in 1900), to the smaller ones catering to some niche of the artistic community, such as Hedgebrook (Women only, opened in 1988) and Cave Canem (African-Americans, founded in 1996). However, they all offer much the same thing—food, board, a space to write, and depending on your own predilections and timetable, the company of other serious artists as and when it pleases you.

In my real life, I spend a ridiculous proportion of my time in tasks relating to food: grocery shopping, preparing daily packed lunches for my children, cooking evening meals—often at least two separate sittings to accommodate divergent schedules, clearing the kitchen, doing dishes, and managing the dishwasher. Imagine with what joy I opened the door of my studio every day at around noon to discover my lunch basket. Yes, someone packed ME a lunch every day and delivered it to my very door in a traditional wicker picnic basket with a decorated lid. This felt like a dream from which I was bound to wake up in the chiller aisle at Shoprite, dithering over different brands of chocolate pudding because I could not remember my youngest daughter’s preference.

The lunches were not extravagant, although they were, at times, idiosyncratic. There was always hot soup in a thermos—chowder, vegetable, potato, black bean—and then a sandwich or a salad. I loved the one with portabella mushroom and candied walnuts; the one with huge chunks of bloody red beets, I confess, not so much.

Breakfast and dinner were communal affairs, the former taking place from 7.30 to 8.30 a.m., and the latter being served promptly at 6.30 p.m. Artists being sensitive folk, many of the meals were vegetarian in nature, but I always got my bacon at breakfast—the ordering system, quaint like many MacDowell customs, consisted of entering the kitchen, writing your name on a list, prepared daily by hand, and checking off several options.

Conversation at dinner was lively and diverse, commencing typically with a polite, “And how did YOUR work go today?” but leaping rapidly, depending on the relative complement of fiction- writers, playwrights, painters and cinematographers at my table, into discussions of human nature, esthetics, plot arcs, historical research, teaching and, of course, the weather.

New Hampshire’s weather in January, I discovered, was as creative and hardworking as any of us. While I was at MacDowell we were buried by three serious snowstorms. During the first of these, concerned my ancient minivan would not make it both ways over the steep trail to Wood Studio, I holed up in the library.

But I wrote nothing original that day, missing the womblike solace and isolation of my cabin, where I had no Internet connection (by choice) and no cell phone service. Word to the wise: the order of connectivity of the major cell phone providers at MacDowell goes like this, from reasonable to nada—Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile. I have AT&T, and could, if I walked from my studio up to the main road and wandered around with my phone held out in front of me like a metal detector, eventually find a spot where I could just get one bar of service.

The maintenance staff at MacDowell, tireless and outfitted with a fleet of snow plows that Philadelphia would envy, had those trails clear almost before the last flake had fallen from the sky. Having observed this, during both of the other storms I headed out to my studio as usual, armed with a couple of extra bottles of water and a few snacks, and spent the day not too anxiously at my desk, occasionally searching the blizzard for inspiration. The worst thing that happened, during snowstorm two, was that my lunch arrived ten minutes late.

My dorm room was comfortable if basic (Bring an extra pillow!), but I truly loved my studio. The morning I left South Jersey, my kids (who had, like myself, only a week’s notice of my wait listed residency offer) were trying to make sense of my projected absence. My younger daughter waved a baffled hand toward the kitchen, which is where I usually set up my laptop and stack my poetry books. “But Mommy, you write THERE!” she said.

Yes, I have written many successful—I hope—poems THERE, despite interruptions by telephones and doorbells, by dogs needing to go out or come in, by children needing homework help or taxiing, and I hope I will again. But, nothing could compare to the exultation I felt every morning at around 9 a.m. when I opened the door to my warm studio, fragrant with birch bark, and saw my desk, free and clear of encumbrances, waiting for me to settle down and just write.

And write I did. At home, if I were to complete one poem, I would immediately jump up in guilty horror because I would be behind on the laundry, or because my dogs had not been walked. At MacDowell I typically spent over two hours writing an installation every morning in my sequence of epistolary poems, rising from my seat only to stretch my legs and make tea. Then I lunched and took a brief walk with my cell phone in order to at least check in on my family. After lunch I wrote something else—perhaps a translation, some prose or a shorter, free verse piece—before diving, if I felt like it, into a second major poem. The epistolary sequence is already twenty poems long, and each poem has twenty-four lines.

I liked to leave my cabin before dark and head over to the Savidge Library, where the free Wifi took on the daily task of reconnecting me with a by now almost imaginary life—emails from friends and regarding the journals I edit, Facebook, Google to research any snippets from the day’s work of which I was unsure. I thought I would miss that encyclopedia at the fingertips more than I did. In fact I got used to marking something [Check!] and continuing to write, my poetic flow unimpeded by a descent into prosaic fact finding.

Then it was time to walk across to Colony Hall for a glass of wine before dinner. MacDowell has no bar, but resident artists bring their own beer, wine and spirits and stand them on a shelf in the main dining room, labeled with an old-fashioned luggage ticket bearing their name.

After dinner, many artists chose to return to their studios and work more on their projects. Personally I was usually creatively exhausted by the six hours I had already spent working (So much more time than I had ever been allowed before!) and so I generally chose to hang out at Colony Hall and participate in whatever social activity was planned. I instigated a Scrabble four; we watched some stimulating movies— ”Burned by the Sun”, “La Belle Verte” and “Married Life”; there was Pool and Ping Pong.

Every artist also takes a turn presenting his or her work—a combination of work completed before coming to the colony, and material being worked on at the colony. I gave my poetry reading during the middle Saturday of my residency and I have never had a more responsive and intelligent audience, even though only two other poets were in residence at the time.

The community of resident artists was like a warm lake caught in a sheltered enclave between the mountains and the coastline. A waterfall of new artists constantly tumbled in, and a river of artists flowed out the other side, heading triumphantly, projects furthered or completed, for the sea. Everyone was nurturing, generous and respectful. I have made some friends here that I believe I will keep for life.

However, I do have to leave here soon. Now, I have heard tales of artists so enamored of the MacDowell Colony that they have chained themselves to their studios. That won’t be me, because I miss my family and my dogs, and can almost not visualize how my life could possibly have continued without me for the last fourteen days.

But these fourteen days have given me so much of value that I will never forget them, and I will strive each year to carve out time for me to return here, or somewhere like here. I am so grateful and proud that my work earned me this.

And I will never look at a packed lunch quite the same way again…