Saratoga and the region suffered a huge power outage and the Skidmore campus, where the Summer Writers Institute is located, went on to generator backup, but that failed, and so a packed auditorium of 150 people sat patiently and enthusiastically in darkness and listened to Charles Simic heroically read his poetry by the light of some flashlights and battery powered camping lamps. Never seen any thing like it, and no one there will likely forget those marvelously odd, strangely surreal poems read, perhaps for the first time, in an environment perfectly suited to them.
