[New-Poetry] Sounding my barbaric AWP

[David Graham]

I don't blog, so you all must suffer.

Notes on last weekend's Association of Writers & Writing Programs  
(AWP) conference in midtown Manhattan.   Skip the following if you're  
allergic to gossip and academic gatherings.

The omnipresent buzz was, of course, about the sheer size of this  
year's conference.  7,500 attendees, they say, and it seemed like an  
under-estimate, especially if you were standing in line for coffee or  
an elevator.  Two main hotels for all the events, so there was much  
shuttling back and forth.  The book fair, which in times past was a  
fairly reliable place to meet all your old pals just by hanging  
around for an hour, was too vast and scattered for this:  there were  
three huge ballrooms full of books, on three separate floors.

What an amazing feast for the literary book lover, even so.  Every  
little press and university press or journal you've ever heard of, it  
seemed, and hundreds you never have.  It takes nerves of steel not to  
walk out with a heavy bag of new titles.  I do not have nerves of steel.

Another aspect of the conference's size was that they ran double  
featured readings in the evening, for the first time in my  
experience.  (I missed the last two years.)  For example, you had to  
choose one evening between hearing Rae Armantraut & Mark Strand, or  
else Susan Cheever & Sue Miller.   They also were militant about  
checking people's registration badges:  no more sneaking in for a  
free taste.

I've never seen as much star power at any previous AWPs.  I mean,  
just on the poetry side of the aisle, the list of laureates alone was  
impressive:  Billy Collins, Mark Strand, Charles Simic, and Robert  
Pinsky were all on hand, along with quite a few other big splashes in  
the poetry pond:  John Ashbery, Sharon Olds, Yusef Komunyakaa, Robert  
Bly, James Tate, Russell Edson, Gerald Stern, Alicia Ostriker, Marvin  
Bell, Sonia Sanchez, Patricia Smith, Richard Howard, Stanley Plumly,  
Louis Simpson, Mark Doty, Martin Espada, Jorie Graham, Li-Young Lee,  
Edward Hirsch, C.D. Wright, Edward Fields, Thomas Lux, Stephen Dunn,  
Joyce Carol Oates (well, she writes some poetry), C. K. Williams, and  
Quincy Troupe, just to list a few.

No-shows (both with broken bones, interestingly) included Louise  
Gluck and Albert Goldbarth.  My guess is that Goldbarth tried to lift  
a pile of his own books, and it snapped his old bones.

I only saw a few of those listed above, as usual at such  
conferences.  I spent much of my time schmoozing with friends,  
trolling the book fair, and in this case checking out the Museum of  
Modern Art, only a block away from the droning of panelists.   
Excellent show of Lucian Freud etchings, by the way.

Interesting to be at a literary event where someone like Collins was  
*not* the featured attraction.  He just ambled around from session to  
session and around the book fair like a Regular Person.  I shook his  
hand and we had a tiny pleasant chat after the Ultra-Talk panel.  And  
his reading was not one of the big nightly features, either.

Highlights:  seeing Russell Edson about three decades after the last  
reading of his I caught, and finding him much the same, happily.  A  
bit stooped and halting, but creatively the same.  The session was a  
tribute to Edson, with his reading preceded by tributes from Robert  
Bly, Charles Simic, and James Tate.  Strange to see that collection  
of geezers on stage and realize that Tate, at age 65, was the  
youngster.  Edson is 73, Simic turns 70 this year, and Bly's 82.  I'd  
not seen Tate in a number of years, and his health seems very  
precarious.  Walks with a cane now.  Very sad to see.

Tate had his own big tribute, with a reading of new work (for which  
he sat down) followed by a Q & A, at which he essentially deflected  
all questions.

Another highlight for me was a panel on religion & poetry, featuring  
talks by Marianne Boruch, Robert Thomas, Greg Rappleye, Laura  
Kasischke, and Roy Jacobstein, all excellent, on time, and well  
prepared--not always the case at AWP.  I had to leave during the Q &  
A, but I'm told some born-agains provided some heated questioning  
afterward to the panelists, some of whom had announced themselves as  
atheists.

Heard Alice Friman read for the first time, and if you ever get a  
chance, go see her.

My favorite session was no doubt the Ultra-Talk panel, with David  
Kirby, Barbara Hamby, Mark Halliday, and Rodney Jones.  One of the  
liveliest in terms of questions and discussion, too.

My greatest disappointment was not hearing what Goldbarth might have  
had to say about Marianne Moore, in a tribute to MM that his  
fractured bones prevented him from attending.  Moore is another Ultra- 
Talk precursor, it seems to me, as Goldbarth is one of our best  
current talkers, ultra- or otherwise.  It was a very interesting  
session, even so, with particularly strong remarks, I thought, from  
Jeanne Marie Beaumont.

Among my too-numerous book purchases was Jason Bredle's *Standing in  
Line for the Beast* (New Issues Press, 2007), which I read on the  
plane home.  If you like Ultra-Talkers, he's a very worthy new  
voice.  And New Issues impressed me greatly with its list, I must say.

I also highly recommend Alice Friman's *Book of the Rotten Daughter*,  
from BkMk Press (2006) and Carol Potter's *Otherwise Obedient*, just  
out from Red Hen Press, another highly impressive small press.

Red Hen's also just published an anthology that is in some ways  
unique.  It's called *Letters to the World*, and consists of poems by  
subscribers to the Wom-Po Listserv.  It's a long and fascinatingly  
complex story, told in the book itself, but in a nutshell--the  
anthology is a collaborative venture arising from the Wom-Po  
membership, which went from being a notion to a blog to an online  
anthology to a book entirely without a "leader", all with volunteer  
labor and an endless stream of on-list talk about methods, goals,  
standards, procedures, etc.  An all-email book, start to finish, with  
input from (if I remember rightly) five continents.  It's truly  
amazing that the book ever appeared, and it's a beauty.   In my  
possibly biased opinion--I wound up as the sole male contributor.

For those who like to track such things, since there was no editorial  
selector of works (anyone who wished could contribute one poem), it's  
among the most eclectic anthologies out there, aesthetically.

AWP is really the blind man's elephant these days, so I'd love to  
hear others' reports.


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David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html

Poetry Library:
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