Late to the Party

AWP was a good time.

There's really not too much to review, I suppose, but I should put something down before I forget everything I wanted to say.

We had about eighty or so people in the audience for our panel. Honestly, that was a lot more than I thought would show up.

This was it:

S158. From the Page to the Small Screen: What the Information Age Means for Us . (Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, Terry Hummer, Maggie Dietz, Mary Flinn, Brian Brodeur, Keith Montesano) As digital technologies such as blogs, online periodicals, hypertext, and phone Apps gain legitimacy, more writing than ever before finds its home online. Some big questions loom: What is lost or gained when we translate our work from the page to the screen? Are these technologies promotional tools or new creative forms? Are we witnessing the death of the page or its evolution? Panelists from Slate, Blackbird, the Favorite Poem Project, AmeriCamera, and the blogosphere will answer these questions.

Thanks again to Andrew for getting everything together, and everyone for making it what it was, even only for an hour.

The main reason I went was the panel.

But I also wanted to meet a lot of people I only "know" through Facebook, and that I did.

I also needed to give Ghost Lights to some blurbers (Paul and Lisa, I still owe you a book).

Wojahn had a signing, but Pittsburgh Press was all out of World Tree. Kind of had me bummed.

It's always amazing to me when I see the complete mix of frighteningly egotistical people that are like sharks to just one drop of blood, and then the people who turn out to be absolutely humble and down to earth. I wish everyone could be in the latter category, but even that realization makes me happier to know, now, so many of them.

Books I picked up:

Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie - Joshua Harmon
Requiem for the Orchard - Oliver de la Paz
Vivisect - Lisa Lewis
Reliquary Fever - Beckian Fritz Goldberg

Was going to buy many more, but I already have a ton to read, as we all probably do.

Plus, since we got a new bookshelf, in the words of Jess: "It really doesn't look like the we did anything. We just moved the books from the original onto the second."

Near the end of AWP, as the book fair was closing down, someone handed me an uncorrected proof of Michael Kimball's Us, which seems right up my alley and I can't wait to read.

Was it you, Michael? Or was it Giancarlo?

Unless I have a reason for going next year in Chicago, I'm probably good for a few years. But maybe things will change.

That said, to all the people I met, drank beers with, shot the shit with, I wanted to say thanks to you. You're all what made AWP for me this year.

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The crossroads point has set in with my second manuscript.

At what point do you say, "It's finished" or, "It's done"?

Is it presumptuous to say that?

Isn't there always something that can be done, even if it's realizing in the .doc file that you have two spaces between a word instead of one?

That said, I'm confident at this point. More confident than I've ever been with it.

The book's not for everyone, just like Ghost Lights was not and is not. But I have a lot of faith in it, more than I ever have with Ghost Lights (is that how it should be?) so hopefully that accounts for something.

I just got it out to five more places, with a handful more added to the list in the coming months.

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I also feel like I've started, finally, a third project.

It still weirds me out a bit to type that.

I know if I don't move on, I'll be stuck, drafting and shredding, deleting.

But I have an idea and I'm running with it.

Unlike the past two manuscripts, I think I'm going to sit on these poems for a while, amass the good ones, tweak them, keep them in mind.

I'm usually fast to send out poems, but admittedly, I like to think a lot of my drafts don't take months, or sometimes even weeks, for me to be finished with them.

A thought's usually in my head for a while, and then usually I can get what I think is a decent draft down when it starts making itself known that it needs to be in words.

This new thing I'm working on isn't like that, so it's important for me to see how it develops. And slow is the way to go at this point. Or at least contained.

Even if it's just a glimmer at this point, I'm excited to see what happens.

And my last new poem, before the few I wrote in this last week, was written in October.

Too long.

Light the fire.

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And also speaking of manuscripts and projects, I have First Book Interviews slated until, at the earliest, May 15th.

Again, I'm getting back to doing one every two weeks. Should I get a flood of them in the next few weeks, maybe I'll do a two-for-one every once in a while, but I want to make sure that the schedule fleshes itself out accordingly.

A lot of good interviews are on the way, so stay tuned.

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You should listen to the new Twilight Singers record, Dynamite Steps.

Greg Dulli has been an influence on me for a long time.

I've written a lot of poems to Dulli-related projects, and somehow the dude never slows down.

The new record's fantastic. It deserves your time.

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This is a busy semester for me, as it's my last semester of course work.

Soon it'll be time for field exams. And I still have to get the language requirement out of the way.

My main goal for the next two and a half years? Get my second manuscript published and have whatever my third's going to be (hopefully there is one) turn out to be my dissertation.

If I have to set myself up for disappointment, then so be it. But that's what I'm shooting for.

That means I don't know how much blogging I'll be doing, but at the very least, First Book Interviews will still be popping up every couple weeks.

New First Book Interviews and More

It's finally Ladies Night with the First Book Interviews:

#9 - Susan Settlemyre Williams

#10 - Suzanne Frischkorn

More in a couple weeks...

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I'm now super disappointed I'm not going to AWP. I was asked to read with the folks below, but since I won't be there, I unfortunately won't be reading. Should be great. Make sure you're there if you're going to AWP.

Here's the post from Steve Schroeder's blog:

AWP Offsite Reading

Anti- and diode are happy to announce the co-sponsoring of an offsite reading at the 2009 AWP Conference in Chicago. The reading will be Friday, February 13th at 7 PM in Curtiss Hall on the 10th floor of the Fine Arts Building at 410 S. Michigan Avenue (just a couple blocks from the conference hotel).

Readers include:

Jake Adam York
Joshua Ware
G. C. Waldrep
Steven D. Schroeder
Lee Ann Roripaugh
Ada Limon
Patrick Lawler
Bob Hicok
Paul Guest
Matthew Guenette
Brent Goodman
Noah Falck
Adam Clay
Mary Biddinger

Food and wine of some kind will be provided. Much gratitude to Patty Paine for doing most of the heavy lifting to organize this event, to the Fine Arts Building for providing space, and to the readers.

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Huge congratulations to Nicky Beer, whose first book, The Diminishing House, will be published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in early 2010.

I've been a fan of Nicky's work for a while now, and anticipated great things happening for her.

Now she has a Ruth Lilly fellowship and a first book on the way.

Sometimes I do actually know what I'm talking about...

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I've been on a documentary kick lately, and I plan to keep devouring them.

I don't feel like writing much about each one, but all of these are more than worth seeing: The Gits, Man on Wire, and American Teen.

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Applications are almost done. I can't believe it.

Also I can't believe that applying to 8 schools will end up costing around $1000 when all is said and done.

Hopefully it'll all be worth it in the end.

Birth

I turn 27 today.

It may be weird or seemingly narcissistic or nonsensical or egotistical, but I find all I keep saying to myself is, "I have 3 years to get my first book into the world." Yes, my goal, like many of the folks under 30 who have a first manuscript floating around, is the age of 30.

But considering the state of the world, I'm lucky to have lived this long thus far. And now that I'm hopefully onto the second manuscript, or at least the seeds of it, there are many other things I should probably be worrying about or at the very least concerned with at this point in my life.

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Speaking of first books, I received Sean Nevin's Oblivio Gate in the mail today.

He's doing a first book interview in the future, and I'm very glad he agreed. He won the 2007 Crab Orchard First Book Award, for which I was also a finalist the first time I ever sent out my "book."

Learning of Sean Nevin as the winner, I immediately started Googling his name and checking out his work, and from what I could find, I was pretty blown away. And I'm flattered and flabbergasted my book, as it was then, was thought to be good enough to be in his company.

Not only that, but there's a reason (probably many, actually) why my book wasn't picked. It wasn't ready. It had a different title. Many different poems. I think the idea and structure's guts and circuits haven't changed much, but it was in a very early and rough stage.

Maybe I'll be saying the same thing in a year or two, but I don't think so. I hope not at least.

Without entering the contest, I'm not sure I would've known about his book. I think it will be getting its due in the future. I've started reading through it already, and it's making me want to sit down and write: always a sign that I need to trust that instinct. And not all first books bring that kind of magic through first reads.

Anyway, be sure to check it out.

SIU Press not only does beautiful books, but they're consistent with quality also. I think they'll be an important press as long as people are still reading contemporary poetry.

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Regarding this post a week ago, it looks like the faux pas has been fixed.

There's no reason to mention the journal, since it was of course an honest mistake, but the interesting thing is the next day I received an email from the Web Editor of another journal, who saw my post and contact the aforementioned journal about their security issues.

It looks like the problem has been fixed, thankfully, as I said. I was more worried about another email address getting out there and spammed more than anything else.

I did, however, take it upon myself to put the link in and grab all the other submissions that I could get that got through to Google. Many of the poets have books out and / or have been published in pretty prominent journals. It's funny how you never know who's sending work, and you never know what you're up against, since so many journals publish from the transom or slush pile and take around 2%-5% of the work submitted that isn't solicited.