If I weren’t going to AWP–and I’m not–this is what Walt Whitman would do:

WEDNESDAY AHSAHTA / OMNIDAWN READING Michelle Taransky, Ben Doller, Elizabeth Robinson, Dan Beachy-Quick, Maxine Chernoff & Paul Hoover, Rusty Morrison, Bin Ramke, Gillian Conoley, Hank Lazer, Laura Moriarty, and others.

UPDATE (thanks to the great Kate Greenstreet): the AHSAHTA PRESS 35th Anniversary Reading (Sandra Doller, Brigitte Byrd, Kate Greenstreet, Brenda Iijima, Susan Tichy, Lance Phillips, Rachel Loden) is at 10:30 on THURSDAY 8:30: opening of the Book Fair: mad dash from the Agnes Fox Press (see Amy McDaniel’s chapbook, Selected Adult Lessons, above, and look for Phil Cordelli’s chapbook and a broadside by Hailey Higdon) / Invisible Ear / Skein / Minutes Books (Seth Landman’s The Wild Hawk the Sea will be there; Rachel Glaser’s Heroes Are So Long and Mark Leidner’s Willie will not) table to the Factory Hollow Press (new titles by Christopher DeWeese and Katie Perry as well as the Disco Praire Social Aid and Pleasure Club Antholgy, above center, which I predict will be by far the hit of the fair) / Notnostrums (When You Think Of It DVD!) / Pilot Books (Emily Pettit’s What Happened To Limbo) table. For Pettit’s HOW (Octopus Books), WW will go where everyone will, to the table of tables, Table X Commune (Belladonna, Canarium Books, The Cupboard, H_NGM_N, Forklift Ohio, Futurepoem, Leon Works, Les Figues Press, Litmus Press / Aufgabe, Lumberyard, Octopus Books, Poor Claudia, Sidebrow, Ugly Duckling Presse.)

[While they last, titles from The Song Cave (see below) and a few copies of the new artists' printing of Lewis Freedman's Catfish Po' Boys will be at the Factory Hollow/notnostrums/Pilot Books table.]

Two of the best panels promise to be in the opening time slot, 9-10:15.  WW would probably go to The Networked Poetry Classroom. (Chris Hosea, Eric Baus, Dorothea Lasky, Mathias Svalina, Michelle Taransky. This panel will examine key issues at the intersection of 21st century technologies and age-old poetic concerns. We will consider how Wikis, blogs, social networking, Moodle, Google Docs, and podcasts are changing the way high school and college students are studying and writing poetry. What happens to assumptions about originality and authority when students collaborate? Can Web 2.0 technologies help students hack unfamiliar texts and forms?) tho he wishes the CLMP Panel—Face Out: Maximizing the Visibility of Emerging Writers. (E. Tracy Grinnell, Rachel Levitsky, Matvei Yankelevich, Rebecca Wolff. A discussion about how small presses present and market experimental work by emerging writers—work too often misunderstood as possessing the least market potential.) was at another time.

2 p.m. Dewclaw Issue 2 reading (Dorothea Lasky, Jen Tynes, Blake Butler, Mike Young, etc.)

Thursday night is truly barbaric (Wave/Canarium/UDP/Octopus, Historic Falcon, Tarpaulin Sky/etc ft. Gordon Massman(!), Action/Litmus/NightboatFC2, Horse Less/Lost Horse, Keyhole, Dogzpank) but WW would definitely go hear Jane Gregory (whose Some Books is going to take some storms by storm) et al at Samples: A reading from 9 poets (The Song Cave / Shearsman / Flim Forum / Woodland Editions / EtherDome Chapbooks / Instance Press represented by James Belflower, Caroline Crumpacker, Susan Dyckman, Jim Elledge, Gregory Jennifer Karmin, Susan Manchester, Jaime Robles and Sarah Suzor.

After all that, WW would probably take FRIDAY off, but might make an exception for the panel on TRANSLATING LGBTQ Writers and Writing with a strong lineup: Nathalie Stephens, Timothy Liu, etc. (Whitman’s own translators include Borges and the murdered Jewish anarchist Gustav Landauer), GURLESQUE Poetry: A Reading. (Lara Glenum, Cathy Wagner, Dorthea Lasky, Danielle Pafunda, Cathy Park Hong, Elizabeth Treadwell) at 12, SARABANDE BOOKS’ Performing Poetry: Good on the Stage, Good on the Page. (Jeffrey Skinner, Karyna McGlynn, Simone Muench, Kiki Petrosino, Brett Eugene Ralph) at 3 (unfortunately at the same time as Translation as Collaboration / Collaboration as Translation with Amaranth Borsuk, who has a new chapbook, Tonal Saw, from The Song Cave, Lara Glenum, and others), COACH HOUSE PRESS: Cross-Border Avant-Garde Extravaganza (Christian Bök, Jen Currin, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Rachel Levitsky, K. Silem Mohammad) at 4:30 and/or the COUNTERPATH/LETTER MACHINE or FEATHERPROOF readings that evening.

Back at it SATURDAY early with a panel Flarf and Conceptual Poetry (K. Silem Mohammad, Christian Bök, Katie Degentesh, Vanessa Place, Mel Nichols, Yedda Morrison; there will be a reading with some of the above plus, e.g., Brandon Downing at the MCA Denver at 3:30) followed by jubilat 10th Anniversary Reading. (Dara Wier, Peter Gizzi, Lisa Olstein, Heather Christle, Jen Bervin,  Cathy Park Hong) at 10:30 and the Chax Press 25th Anniversary Reading (Charles Alexander, Hank Lazer, Leslie Scalapino, Kyle Schlesinger, Jane Sprague, Elizabeth Treadwell) at 1:30 and offsite readings with Fence/1913 (Cabaret performances by: Aaron Kunin, Catherine Wagner, Macgregor Card, Ben Doller, Brandon Downing, etc.) at 5 and capping it all off at 7 when WW can bring all the books he bought to the bonfire that is Possess Nothing with Action Books, Apostrophe Books, Black Ocean Press, Slope Editions and Tarpaulin Sky Press (Jessica Baran, Crystal Curry, Julie Doxsee, Sandy Florian, Lara Glenum, Johannes Goransson, Joe Hall, Lucy Ives, Paul Foster Johnson, Gordon Massman(!), Zachary Schomburg, Abraham Smith, Shelly Taylor, and Amy Wright.)

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