Some poetry conferences are notorious for their excesses – drinking into the wee hours, whirlwind romances, preening divas clustered around by all their starry-eyed acolytes. But what about a poetry conference where poetry is the star? I must admit I never thought of myself as the conference-going kind, but I’ve been converted in recent years by a gathering of serious-minded poets, teachers, and readers who assemble each summer to learn about, celebrate, and nurture the craft of the one thing they all have in common – poetry. (Of course, I’d be lying if I said there was no beer at social occasions; poets, I find, do not tend to teetotalism.)

Each June I make my way past the Delaware River and Valley Forge to the West Chester University Poetry Conference in Pennsylvania, the 11th of which begins this afternoon and runs through Saturday. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that this year I will be serving on the faculty, teaching a course on performing poetry.) The conference was founded by poet and current National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia and the fine-press printer Michael Peich (rhymes with “like”) on the improbable belief that, despite a literary climate with strong indications to the contrary, poets and readers still care about the pleasures of traditional verse.

The renowned poet Richard Wilbur, who, as he puts it, has been “associated with the West Chester shindig from the beginning,” sees the conference as an oasis:

In the outer dark, beyond the limits of the conference, one continues to hear certain old, mistaken ideas about poetry: the notion that formal verse is backward-looking, while free verse is eternally experimental; that formal verse sacrifices the thought to sound and pattern. … [At West Chester,] it can go without saying that the poet’s traditional weaponry is employed in the cause of what is being said, and that it gives pleasure only if it gives the statement a power, precision, and strong rightness of tone which it couldn’t otherwise have.

Despite the convictions underlying its inception, the conference is neither ponderous nor dogmatic; rather, it is an opportunity for poets to set aside their workaday routines and devote themselves to the enjoyment and study of a wide variety of verse, both traditional and experimental. Participants spend long days careering from panel discussions to workshops to readings to barbecues to artsong concerts and, finally, bleary-eyed, to sleep, only to repeat the whole thrilling, exhausting round the following day. Mr. Peich, the conference director, occasionally refers to it as “poetry boot camp,” and by the end of the week you know what he means – you marvel at the many valuable things that have been absorbed in such a short time.

Over the years I’ve had the good fortune to hear, and often even to meet, a good number of my favorite poets at West Chester and to discover the work of poets previously unknown to me. I will always relish the memory of attending a small, one-day workshop on the lyric poem led by the poet Anthony Hecht; Hecht’s gorgeous and sonorous reading was introduced by J.D. McClatchy and followed by musical settings of Hecht’s poems by the composer Lowell Lieberman. In the wake of Hecht’s death late last year at the age of 81, such memories have become even more precious to me. There was no finer contemporary poet, and to have benefited from his gifts as a poet and a teacher at West Chester is an honor I will always cherish.

Then there was the night when the audience came under the spell of Michael Donaghy reading from his work. The Bronx-born Donaghy had been living in London for many years, and his trips to West Chester were rare homecomings. No one, I think, knew what to expect when he first took the stage, and no one in attendance will likely forget his command, and his humor, and his astonishing poems. Now Donaghy, too, is gone. His friends from West Chester were horribly saddened last fall to learn of his death at the unspeakably young age of 50.

Perhaps the finest poet of his generation in England, Donaghy (like Hecht) will be remembered at this year’s conference with a tribute to his work. Early summer is not a season typically associated with elegy, but an elegiac mood infuses much of the program for this year. In contemporary poetry, 2004 was something of an annus horribilis. Also absent at West Chester this year will be the poet Donald Justice, who read at the conference in 1996 and last year succumbed to a long illness.

Despite these sober tidings, the mood at the conference should be, as always, upbeat. Acquaintances and friendships will be eagerly renewed, and there are many fine events to look forward to, including readings by faculty members Christian Wiman, the editor of Poetry magazine, and A.E. Stallings, a marvelous young poet now based in Greece. Other faculty readers include conference regulars David Mason, Timothy Steele, R.S. Gwynn, B.H. Fairchild, Mark Jarman, Kim Addonizio, and Dick Davis. A keynote reading will be given tonight by Anne Stevenson, and an appreciation of her work will be moderated by Mr. Gioia tomorrow. On Friday, Adam Kirsch, the book critic of the Sun, will give a one-day workshop in reviewing poetry.

The biggest news at the conference this year will be the announcement by the West Chester University Poetry Center of the creation of the Spencer Awards: the Iris N. Spencer Poetry Prize, given to a student from the Delaware Valley, and the Donald Justice Poetry Award, which will result in the publication of the winning manuscript. Kean W. Spencer, with a gift of $250,000, endowed the two prizes in memory of his mother, Iris (who turns 75 this month) to honor both emerging and established poets. Mr. Spencer is not a poet himself, though as a young man he received the University of Michigan’s prestigious Hopwood Award for poetry.

“The award meant a great deal to me as an 18-year-old,” Mr. Spencer recalled, “and I know that there are young people out there like me at that time. I want to encourage people to pursue the arts either vocationally or avocationally and to get students thinking if they haven’t written a poem to try writing a poem.”

In establishing a book prize in memory of Donald Justice, the Poetry Center honors its past while looking to the future. And, in a sense, that is what all poets who work in traditional forms attempt to do: glance backward for guidance and inspiration while at the same time advancing the art by breaking new ground. The West Chester conference may be part of a renewed interest in poetry across the county, but the conference also preceded and helped to give rise to that renewal. A number of younger poets who started out at West Chester have gone on to widespread recognition and acclaim. It’s clear from this vantage, with conference attendance larger than ever, that West Chester’s first decade is only the beginning.

Mr. Yezzi is poetry editor of the New Criterion.