Poetry Readings and The VIDA Count

58º ~ thick white cloud cover after last night's rain, storms a possibility though only the tiniest of tiny breezes for now

Last weekend, we had the Arkansas Literary Festival here in Little Rock, and it was fantastic.  This was the 10th year for the festival, and I'm thrilled that so many folks continue to attend.  There are always a few events, panels, or workshops on Thursday and Friday, but things really kick off with the author party on Friday night, at which I had a great time circulating with Martha Silano and Hope Coulter. 

Saturday, I managed to attend two readings. The first featured Christi Shannon Kline and Steve Kistulentz.  I was stunned to realize that Steve and I know tons of the same people and have published in several of the same journals, and yet, I'd neither read his two books nor befriended him on Facebook yet.  Both Christi and Steve did a wonderful job reading; however, sadly, they were at the first time slot and the audience was sparse.  I'm sad for the folks of central Arkansas who missed this one.

I had intended to move on to hear C.D. Wright, whom I've heard read several times before, but then fate intervened and Steve and I ended up having a cup of coffee.  The weather had warmed just enough that we were able to sit outside and people watch as we exchanged poetry stories and talked teaching.  I felt a bit like AWP had descended on Little Rock, as these are the kinds of chance encounters I long for and look forward to as AWP approaches each year.  Needless to say, I've added Steve's work to my towering stack, just begging for the end of the semester!  (I have a hard time mustering the focus that a poetry collection requires during these last few weeks.)

You might spy, Christian Wiman's My Bright Abyss there toward the top as well.  Having learned many a lesson about pacing myself at AWP, I went home and took a rest mid afternoon before returning for Wiman's session.  I had the great fortune to be introduced to him prior to the reading and was charmed by his authenticity.  Having known his name as the big cheese at Poetry for the last decade, I wasn't sure what to expect.  I confess, I was also a bit hesitant about his latest book, having been on the receiving end of one too many overly-evangelical people who have found their way back to Christianity after a health scare.  In the end, all of my reservations were silly. The reading was fantastic as Wiman wove passages from My Bright Abyss, a memoir of his journey back to faith, and poems from Every Riven Thing.  In the end, I bought both books, which should tell you how completely Wiman won me over.

Still, I left that reading with the VIDA count ringing in my ears.  This is not an indictment of Wiman but of the larger institutionalized gender bias at play in the world of literature.  To explain: Inevitably at these readings, when there is a Q & A, the question of influences and admiration for other writers comes up.  As Wiman rattled off a list of poets, I watched someone in the row with me scribble down all the names, and all the names were male, and all the names were white. 

Again, I do not mean to throw a judgment down on Wiman.  His prose and his poetry thrilled me, infused as they were with a joy for language and a stunning craft.  If these are his influences, these are his influences.  Instead, I was saddened by the lack of women and people of color.  Instead, I was reminded again of how fortunate I was to have the undergraduate instructors I had at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University who were intent on breaking the canon wide open.  Yes, we studied Hopkins, Yeats, and Keats, Pound and Eliot, Heaney and Lowell; however, I was also exposed to Joy Harjo, Li-Young Lee, Lucille Clifton (these first three live and in person on campus), Quincey Troupe, Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, let alone Plath and Sexton and all hail Emily Dickinson!

The one resounding fact that remains with me is that when a poet has the good fortune to read in front of a captive audience made up of energetic readers of poetry and people aspiring to become poets, there is a power in the names we list.  There are people out there writing down the names, and who knows, some of them may even go and check out the poetry of those we name.  Isn't this how institutionalized perceptions change, by the names we name, the books and lit mags we recommend, the ever-expanding web of writers we nurture?

*I spy a personal "project" for AWP 2014...keeping a list of the names discussed during readings and panel discussions.

Where I'll Be on Sunday Evening: No Place in Particular: White Water Tavern

53º ~ temps inching back toward "normal" ~ the one word that has not applied at all this spring, trees 75% leafed out, storms in the offing


Via the amazing & talented Al Maginnes, I've become acquainted with R.J. Looney, an Arkansas poet I hadn't met before.  All hail, Al Maginnes! 

Through that connection, R.J. invited me to be part of the lineup for "No Place in Particular," a poetry & music fest on Sunday (April 28), starting at 5:00 p.m. at White Water Tavern in Little Rock.  Here's a link to the event description on Facebook.  According to that description, the poets will take the mic first from 5 - 7:30ish, and then the musicians will follow.  Should be a stomping good time.  If you're in Central Arkansas, y'all come! 

Brief Note

44º ~ cold, cold rain, cloudcover, etc, a lapse

Yes, I'm still here, holding on by fingertips.  Rest assured, when the semester wraps up and I've had a chance to sleep a bit, I'll return in full force.

Until then, I hope to make sporadic appearance.  Until then, I'm dreaming of long uninterrupted mornings of reading and writing and blog sharing.

I do apologize to those of you who post regularly, as I've had to sacrifice most of my blog reading time to meetings on campus, spring chores, and grading/grading/grading. 

Until then...

Coming Attractions

59º ~ beautiful spring weather, if a bit cloudy today, all the leaves are in the process of unfurling, the view is fairly neon with them, the Thanksgiving pansies continue to thrive as the temps have remained below normal

Life is scattered and fragmented, friends.  And this, this is April.  I offer you a view of my week in case I fail to appear here.

At the top of the priority list are my students and my grading of their third major essay of the semester.  Given that we only have about three weeks of school left, and they have one more essay to write, they need me to stay on task so my comments on this paper can aid them in their last. We are finishing up workshop in creative writing and then I'll spend a week having individual conferences with each of my 18 students in that class as they polish their portfolios.  In the last class days after conferences, we'll talk about the profession of writing and publishing.  (The end is in sight!)

Monday, after teaching and office hours, we have a department meeting at one of our satellite campuses. 

Tuesday, I head down to Hot Springs to visit a creative writing class at the Arkansas School for Math, Science, and the Arts (ASMSA).  I love, love, love these visits and am really looking forward to it!

Wednesday & Thursday, teaching and see note above about grading.  My goal is to have all essays returned by Thursday afternoon, because...

Friday - Sunday = the Arkansas Literary Festival

Friday, the Big Rock Reading Series, which I coordinate, will partner with the festival to host Martha Silano and Johnathon Williams, and I am super psyched about this reading.  Having heard both Martha and Johnathon read, I know this is going to be fantastic.  Our reading is during the day, and then, Friday night is the author party for the festival.  Good times!

Saturday will be festival city from 10 a.m. until the cows come home.  This year I'm delighted by the schedule as there will be poets in nearly every time slot.  Here's who I'm hoping to see/hear:
Steve Kistulentz & Christi Shannon Kline (both new to me)
C.D. Wright
Frank X. Walker (although his session is up against Richard Ford...hmmmm)
Christian Wiman

Then, Saturday night I'm participating in "Pub or Perish."  This began as a pub crawl with poetry readings at each bar.  Now, it is in one location and features scheduled readers from 7 - 9 before an open mic.

Sunday will be a true day of rest so that I can hit the ground running the following Monday as we sprint to the finish line of the semester with the last two full weeks of classes and then the grading extravaganza that is finals week.  The school calendar says that commencement commenceth on May 18.  Wahooo!

Draft Process: After the Hope of a Happy Ending Passes

44º ~ tornadoes and high winds last night heralded a cold front returning us to cooler temps, wild skies remain


Wow.  A draft!  Let me tell you, Dear Reader, I was sitting at my desk this morning, following my routine, knowing that as it was a Thursday, I would go into work an hour later than I do on MWF, but not really conscious of why.  As I read through the blogs and saw a lot of NaPoWrMo posts, a wee bit of lightning struck me upside the head: "It's Thursday!  That's drafting day."

And this is what I mean about courting the muse and not waiting for her.  I have put a pattern in place, and usually, I focus consciously on that pattern so that I'm thinking "draft a poem, draft a poem, draft a poem" on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.  At this point in the semester, things are starting to fall apart, the gyre is definitely widening (check out Yeats' "The Second Coming" if that's a new one for you).  But, despite the chaos, the pattern remained.

As I stated on Monday, I've been haunted by the news of a missing girl in Arkansas, and she keeps coming up in drafts, but I'm uncomfortable about two things: 1) the ungainly narrative/clumsy prose nature of what I drafted, and 2) telling a story not mine to tell.  This morning, the angry sisters returned and said, "We've got this.  We're mad as hell, and we're going to take over."  So, the new draft begins:

In the woods,
           the angry sisters search

That's the line that sent me spinning to my journal.  I hadn't done any of my normal routine of clearing the desk, reading poetry by others, etc.  I was simply looking at blogs and Facebook and Boom!  The lines also came out in ragged indents, short, compressed, clipped.  All that I'd been longing for in that burdensome earlier draft.

I owe Traci Brimhall yet another debt of gratitude because her work reminds me that there can be brutality and ugliness in poems, and I mean that in the best way possible.  So, when the angry sisters wanted to get ugly about bodily rape and emotional violation (which sadly, is very often the story when young girls and boys go missing and stay missing like this), I took a deep breath and didn't turn away, as I have in the past.  It definitely helped that the angry sisters were speaking.  Their persona allowed me to say what I had been struggling to say in that earlier draft.  Their persona also allowed me to fictionalize the situation beyond this specific case in Arkansas right now.

I have often wanted to write what might be considered political poems, but I've never been able to put those ears on the table as Carolyn Forche does in "The Colonel." (And she does it with the most limber, gymnastic prose poetry ever.  Damn.)  "The Colonel" is one of those foundational poems that rocked me to the core as a young undergrad and made me want to write.   Perhaps I shied from the overtly political, though, because I didn't understand my own need for persona to do so.  Who knows?  Maybe this is just another angry sister poem or maybe the angry sisters just discovered their mission.

Draft Process: An Alternate End to the Story

65º ~ hello spring

Just a quick note to say that even though I tried to draft over the weekend, nothing came of it except a bunch of terrible lines more prose than poetry.  And then, this morning, I was reading my blog feed and stumbled on Verbatim's post of "Four Trees Quartet."  Verbatim is a site for found poems, in this case, a set of poems built from lines in a field guide to trees.  Of course, this was right up my alley.  As I read, I kept coming back to the last line of "Eastern Hemlock," "as fuel, the wood throws sparks."  Eventually, I had to copy that line into my journal, and then more lines followed of my own.

This weekend, I kept trying to draft about the fact that there is a girl missing here in Arkansas.  Her stepfather was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound but so far, she has not been found.  At the beginning, the searches met daily; now it is on the weekends and holidays.  Let me say this: I do not want to write about this girl, this tragedy, but she keeps turning up.  I've seen too many of these stories unfold to hold out much hope for a happy ending, so I kept wanting to write her an alternate ending, an ending of power.

That's what happened this morning.

Still, I do not know if this poem will go beyond this draft.  I do not know if this is my story to tell.  I do not know if this is exploiting the girl in question.  I only know the draft had to be written.

No Draft: There's Hope for Saturday, Though

44º ~ the saddest drizzle ever, one more day of shivery temps and then perhaps, perhaps, a wee glimpse of spring before Arkansas runs headfirst into heat & humidity


T.S. Eliot and I are not friends.  I can tolerate Prufrock, although I find myself hearing his voice now as a whine rather than a lament.  I dutifully read and annotated The Waste Land and probably learned a lot I should be thankful for, although the memory of the work still reeks with the scent of heavy labor with little pay off for me.  Judge me not.  I'm a firm believer that we all find our poetry kin in different places.

All this to say that this week, I really do believe this (the opening of said Waste Land):

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

I knew it would be a tough month, but an unexpected disappointment has added to the difficulty of April.

~~~~~

On another poetry note, it turns out that if one stops submitting poems, one stops receiving acceptances (and rejections).  So, two sides of the coin go missing at once.

~~~~~

And because she is my hero, here's a recording of Lucille Clifton reading her untitled poem "won't you celebrate with me," a poem I've tried to adopt as my own personal theme song.

Chalk the Walk 2013

43º ~ beautiful day Monday and now in the midst of a three day cold, cold rain


To celebrate National Poetry Month at PTC, we chalk the walk with excerpts from poems.  Here are some pics of the results.  Luckily, the weather was beautiful Monday.  After last night's rain, all of these words will have been washed away, but that's the nature of the project.

 

Draft Process: In Our Time of Trial, Our Wounds Resisted

55º ~ spring storms have settled in, gully washing away the morning, all gray and wet


Well, praise be!  My hope from Thursday materialized, and I did find time this morning to draft a new poem.  There's not a lot to tell about today's process that is new.  I sat with my journal and a book and a little instrumental music on soft, soft, soft.  I had my cup of coffee.  I listened to it rain.  I caught hold of a line from the book I was reading and thought I had a beginning.

After scratching through some hard-won lines, I feared that maybe I was pushing this angry sisters thing too much.  Maybe they only had a handful of poems in them.  Maybe I've grown addicted to the idea of a persona leading me through an entire book. 

Then, I remembered that earlier Eduardo Corral had put out a call for favorite words on his Facebook page, hoping to use some of those words given to him by others in a draft of his own.  My word was "cauterize."  Remembering it snapped today's draft into focus.  I confess there's a bit of fever in it (ah, you sickly speaker, haunting, haunting).  The angry sisters seem to also have a thread of burning/fire/ashes underlying many of the drafts so far. 

Oh, I forgot.  Before I started drafting today, I read over last week's draft and realized that I had to cut an entire stanza, which contained one of my favorite phrases.  Guess what?  Most of that stanza worked to make the last stanza of today's draft.  This rarely happens for me.  In this case, I kept trying to use that left-over stanza as a beginning, and then gradually realized that it had to be the end.  Again, I rarely begin working on a poem knowing the ending, but there you go. 

As for the title, it began as the first line at some point in the draft, and when I realized that I needed to add a bit of information to the first stanza, something had to give.  Cutting the first line created an instant title. 

In the end, I'm still not sure about the angry sisters and if I'm pigeon-holing myself or forcing too much, but I do know that April looks to be an insane month and I'm happy to have this draft in case I'm derailed for the next few weeks.

What? No Draft Today?! (How To Not Heap on the Guilt)

48º ~ desperately seeking our normal beautiful spring temperatures, still there is sun and all the trees are at some stage of budding out with the sweetgum running last and the bleepity bleep privet winning, those tiny pale-yet-neon green flags are a heartening sight


Today, no draft for me.  Sigh.  I am struggling to avoid heaping on the guilt.  It seems that re-entering the semester after Spring Break has been a challenge for all involved this year and I am not weathering it well.  The last six or seven weeks of the semester are always hectic, and I'm trying to take a lesson from my friend RR who is also trying to go with the flow rather than getting pushed and pulled along.  But to the draft.

Today is one of those days when the Big Rock Reading Series and Drafting Day overlap, so I've spent the last few days putting things in place for tonight, only to wake up in the middle of the night thinking of three or four things I've totally neglected and need to add to my checklist.  Yes, I have a checklist that I print out each time one of these events approaches.  I'm a geek like that. 

So, how am I avoiding the self-punishment of feeling guilty about not drafting.

1.  Remembering student responses to previous BRRS events.
2.  Remembering that today is still going to be about writing and sharing, just not about my writing.
3.  Remembering that the angry sisters (my current drafting obsession) will still be there, just below the surface, and hoping that they won't be angry at me!
4.  Looking ahead to the weekend and thinking that maybe, just maybe I can shift some grading and do some drafting Saturday morning.
5.  Remembering that teaching is my paying gig (and one that feeds me in other ways as well) and that I'm fortunate to be able to take the summers off (please do not mistake me here, this means NOT getting paid for three months) and write for days on end.
6.  Chocolate & coffee, always, chocolate & coffee...and in the a.m. that chocolate is delivered in a candy bar disguised as a fiber bar.  Hah!

Onward!

Tonight, we are going to have a wonderful time with local author Carla Killough McClafferty, who writes nonfiction books for middle grade children.  She began writing with a book about her spiritual journey in the wake of her young son's death, and then she turned to what has become quite a lineup of these nonfiction books.  We are going to hear about The Many Faces of George Washington, which McClafferty likens to "C.S.I. meeting the biography channel" as it follows a group of historians, scientists, and artists trying to recreate the most accurate renderings of George Washington.

If you live in the area, I hope you can come out to enjoy!

See you on the flip side!

Draft Process: In the Aftermath We Became Prairie Sirens

38º ~ sliding backward into winter temps, but at least we have sun and not the sleet predicted, rain is in the offing through tomorrow, highs only in the low 40s ~ cruel, cruel


Today's time at the desk of the Kangaroo is a tale of both failure and what might be counted as a success. 

Last night, I remembered to remind myself that this morning I would write a poem.  I remembered to remind myself all through my morning routine of shower, dressing, breakfast, coffee, &etc.  Alas, no spark of inspiration like last week.  Instead, I sat down at the desk with all of my necessary ingredients (a clear desk, my journal & pen, some instrumental music [today, Thelonius Monk], and a window), and NOTHING.  So, I went back and read all my new drafts since finishing the sickly speaker.  The fall was mostly silent, with a few poems drafted in November, but things picked up in December and onward, so I have a nice little handful.  Luckily, I still like many of the drafts, and luckily, I didn't get sidetracked with revisions, just jotted down any notes that struck me so I could come back to them later. 

Once I finished reading the work in progress, I expected something to happen, so I opened my journal and scratched out a few forced lines.  Bleck.  Then, I decided I would open up Traci Brimhall's Our Lady of the Ruins (my personal response to the book is here) because she uses the plural first person in many of the poems, and several of my newer poems (the angry sisters) use that point of view as well.  After reading two poems, I thought I was inspired; I thought I was beginning a draft.  I dutifully wrote out ten lines or so of really terrible narrative, the most non-poetic stinkbombs I've written in a long time.  Those lines languished on the page and did not give me the excitement, the tingle (yes, the spidey sense) that I needed to switch to the computer and finish the draft.

Le sigh.

So, back to the book and back to a process that has yet to fail me: word gathering.  I started at the first poem in Our Lady and gathered (i.e. stole) a bunch of nouns and verbs from Traci, with all respect and admiration.  Once I got abut thirty of them scrawled in ramshackle fashion across the page, connections began to spark.  I drew my arrows and circles connecting words (it's important to note that I never collect two words from the same line and make sure to place words from the same poem far apart on the page in my journal; my intent is never to plagiarize).  The two words that sparked today's real draft, the one that might be a successful poem someday were "honey" and "hourglass."  I suddenly had an image of the sand in an hourglass replaced by honey and what that would mean in terms of time.  In that moment, the angry sisters snapped back and started singing. 

We filled the bedside hourglass
            with honey, slow slurry
to time our ill-fated rendezvous...

Another important note about word gathering: I usually only end up using three or four pairs from what I've scribbled in my notebook.  As the draft takes off and gathers to a critical mass, I'm able to access my own word store and find my own interesting clashing together of language.  I guess I'm a bit like those old engines that need priming before they fire to life.

As for the title, this poem takes place after the family catastrophe, and the draft ended up taking a really quirky turn with the angry sisters becoming these pulsing, sexual bodies, and I had an image of the sirens of mythology, but this time the setting is on the prairie (oh, how I missed it while I was away with the sickly speaker!).  I hope folks will get the allusion in the title when they read the full draft.  I know that sirens on the prairie are usually associated with tornado warnings, so I'll have to see.

Until then...

Where I've Been: Harding University

48º ~ bright sun, tiny breezes, a massive drop in temps predicted after today (snow forecast in the northern tier of Arkansas counties for Friday) and through the next week  ...uhm...hello?...spring???

So, this is Spring Break.  A little bit of sleeping in; a lot of catching up on household tasks waylaid by the semester and AWP.  Oh, and yes, there is grading being done as well.  It never stops!

In terms of poetry, yesterday I had the great fortune to read for and talk with Dr. Nick Boone's Poetry Writing class at Harding University in Searcy, AR.  While I love to do readings, combining them with class visits is my absolute favorite thing to do, and Dr. Boone's students did not disappoint.

For the reading, Nick had me email him a file with my poems and as I read, the poems were projected onto the class screen.  This was the first time I'd done something like this and it was interesting.  First off, as I finished each poem, I needed to scroll down to the next one.  I read from printed copies and then leaned over to maneuver the mouse.  What I liked about this was the forced break between poems.  When I read, I definitely try to give each poem its due by pausing after the last line. (Pet Peeve: when at a poetry reading and the poet rushes to say something almost before the last word of the poem is out of her mouth.)  Having to manipulate the computer made a natural break between poems.  Second, as I read, the students were following along on the screen.  This was a bit of a difference for me, as I practice my readings a lot and really try for eye contact with the audience.  Luckily, there were a few students who seemed focused more on me than the screen.  I do see the value of the printed poems as I read, especially for beginning writers of poetry, as they could see linebreaks and stanza breaks and all the white space on the page.  

After I finished reading, I had some craft notes prepared, but I really just love to talk with students and opening up the room to questions worked perfectly.  The students were bright and articulate and asked all the right questions so that I was able to incorporate my craft notes into a more free-flowing discussion.  We talked about poetry being part inspiration and part craft and that the craft comes along from reading a lot and writing a lot.  In particular, I covered sound and form, form in terms of free verse still needing structure and how important linebreaks and stanza breaks can be, even when not using a formal method.

All in all, it was a great day focused on poetry and students, two of my favorite things!

Four Poems from the Sickly Speaker @ Connotation Press; Two @ diode

54º ~ oh yeah, baby, 54º and the sun is just starting to come up...hello spring!, hello Spring Break (in four hours!)

Many thanks to Kaite Hillenbrand and Ken Robidoux over at Connotation Press for showing the sickly speaker so much love.  These four poems are from near the end of her journey.

And earlier in the year, the irreplaceable Patty Paine and Jeff Lodge over at diode gave her a bit more encouragement.  Two poems that also appear near the end.

Draft Process: Home Ec 101

45º ~ headed for 70º today and nearing 80º for Fri/Sat ~ wahooooooooooo! ~ bright, clear skies, spring breezes tease the tattered remains of the privet tree outside the window, beaten down by the Xmas storm, new leaves are budding


Credit this draft process with chaos. The first line struck me from out of the blue, on one of the planes home from AWP 2013 (Boston).  I saw either an ad or a typographic poem that featured the image of a hive in cross section with words on it, now I'm thinking it was definitely a poem.  In any case, out of nowhere, I heard in my head, "The angry sisters were born with no hive mind."  I scribbled it down in the back of my Zone 3 notebook (see earlier post about forgetting my journal).  And then, chaos ensued.

I hit the ground running Sunday evening and haven't stopped until this moment, catching up on student emails, doing laundry, restocking the kitchen, teaching, prepping, grading, &etc.  Somewhere in there I caught a few hours of sleep each night.  Last night, as I was thinking about today, I planned to go into campus a bit later because I will be attending a fund raiser tonight that will keep me on campus until 9 or so (with a silent art auction, where I always SCORE!)  In any case, the point of this is that in all the chaos, I wasn't even really thinking that Thursday morning = drafting time.  Somewhere around 5 a.m. when the cats started wanting their breakfasts, it dawned on me that YES, I was going to draft a poem, come hell or high water.

As I went through my ablutions (can't do anything until my [non-religious] ablutions are through...blessings to those who can pop up and start to write!), the line came back, "no hive mind."  Hmmmm.  As I was pouring my cereal, but before I'd gotten to the milk, a whole ton of lines just cascaded down on me.  So, I went back to the desk, sans cereal, and started writing, quickly b/c I was STARVING.  Once I'd gotten to the end of the initial rush, about ten lines, I went back and ate my breakfast.  Those ten lines were waiting for me when I was ready to draft, and with a bit of pushing, a bit of prodding, I turned out a three stanza, 19-line poem.  The stanzas are four lines, seven lines, eight lines, and the lines are all around eight syllables and between four and five stresses. The title, "Home Ec 101," did not come easily and I'm not sure it is a fit.  However, this subject matter is so very different from the sickly speaker, who lent herself to my lifting titles from several poets I love (aka Lucie Brock-Broido, Mary Ann Samyn, and Emily Dickinson), that I'm not really able to follow the same method here.  Instead, I'm back to sifting through the dark for a title.  Minor complaint, given the fact that amidst the chaos, I did, in fact, draft a poem today.

Wahoooooooooo!

AWP 2013: Pictorial

34º ~ spring is reticent in Little Rock, but trees are budding and birds & bees are doing their birds & bees thing

**I wish I'd taken about 100 more photos, as there are so many friendly faces missing from this post.  Next year, I'm attaching my camera to my lanyard!

Steve Schroeder, nacho killer

Traci Brimhall, duck lipped texting

Alison Pelegrin, Louisiana beauty

Eric Morris (BOR), concentration face

Stephanie Kartalopoulos, in the nick of time

Marie Gauthier with Georgie, Rose Carlson, my Tupelo Press touchstones

Yep, that panel is SRO

Mary Biddinger (BOR) & Helen Vitoria (Thrush), bookfair queens

Allison Benis White, I bought the first copy of her new book!

Missing Tara Bray!

Seth Pennington & Bryan Borland (Sibling Rivalry Press), Newlyweds!

The writers go up, the writers come down.

Attempting to part the writer sea.

Tawnysha Greene, finally meeting in the flesh!

Traci Brimhall & Chad Sweeney, off-site banter

Laura McCullough, lovely lady in red light

the amazing Ken Robidoux, Connotation Press

Laura McCullough, this is AWP for me!

My brother, Al Maginess

Cutest picture of Al ever!

In the trenches at Dunkin' Donuts, Hynes Convention Center

Boston snow

Erin Coughlin Hollowell, her book is out and she flew all the way from Alaska!

Josh Robbins, his book is out from UARK, woo pig sooie!

David Clark, my Little Rockian-in-law (32 Poems)

Andy McFadyen-Ketchum (poemoftheweek.org) and Matt Guenette

 (with Mark Sptizer)

Jim May (with Adelyn)

Lisa Fay Coutley, in the flesh, shouting it out, Adam Vines approves

Greg Alan Brownderville, preaching to the masses