ToBS R2: the guy who goes 20 minutes over the suggested reading time vs. AWP
[Matchup #34 in Tournament of Bookshit]
To locate the source of a power that’s true and absolute, a power that comes from the center of the integrity of the essence of each contestant, one must not go through hate, but love. So hear you this, Guy Who Goes 20 Minutes Over the Suggested Reading Time—GWG20MOTSRT, if I may be so bold—you have made me love you. You’re right, for the first 50 minutes, I wasn’t really even paying attention to you or the carefully coiffured bedhead you clutched as if in pain in between poems, though I did come up with some handy new ways to discreetly check my email on my phone, and looking back now, it’s safe to say I was taking you for granted, GWG20MOTSRT, or GWG20MO, can I call you GWG20MO? But G-MO, a few moments before it’s been suggested by who knows what power (probably that guy sitting in the front row who introduced you not 57 minutes earlier) or what authority (God’s) that you step down or at least cede the floor to a Q&A, I begin, at last, to notice you. I notice your breath, the speed and cadence of your voice, the way you shift from foot to foot, with an increasing and increasingly wild alertness, as if there is some kind of pattern to be discerned there, a pattern that might gesture towards a greater, future happiness. Perhaps two swipes through that hair, now drooping despite its coif, means two more poems; perhaps when you’ve leaned on your right elbow’s jacket patch for the length of three gossamer moons and a grackle, the task of supporting of your own admirably well-kept head will become too much and you’ll be forced to shut the book—GWG20MO, I can’t take my eyes off you. It’s as if we’re the only two people in the room. You’re sweating now and I can see it and it’s so intimate. Do you give even one good God damn for me? Can you hear me shift and sigh and slouch towards you? Is this punishment for those times I very suavely deleted messages from Groupon about 25% off tanning with the heel of my boot while American starlings combed pensively those vast and lyric skies? I am rapt. I have failed to resist you. I have, so very badly, to pee. READ MORE >
ToBS R1: flarf vs. AWP
[Matchup #4 in Tournament of Bookshit]
If my own personal feelings toward a thing had anything to do with it, flarf would win this in a landslide, but feelings are not real. Last year, I introduced a flarf poem by K. Silem Mohammad to a class of fifth grade students while teaching a poetry unit for an unpaid internship (it was the one Mohammad poem I could find without cusses or things a fifth grade teacher could get mad at me for). The students became immediately enamored with the flarf process and the possibilities of poetry that refused to do whatever it is that poetry has been expected to do since the first caveman uttered the first O! Poetry was finally fun to these kids. They wrote poems that were funny and surprising in ways that only a child or google can be surprising. But now I can’t help but imagine these children, thirty years from now, well into their poetry careers, paying $190 ($150 if they pre-register) to attend their own book-signings, getting stupidly drunk and sleeping next to a stranger in their hotel rooms, and then possibly fantasizing about responding to an htmlgiant post about whether or not they’ve gotten laid at AWP with “i can’t remember.” Then, redirecting their browser to Google, the poet will search for blog posts about their own AWP readings and find their name only in a long list form and this will happen again the next year and the next year. The poet will then go to Whole Foods or Costco and buy some food for vegans or food for cheap and carry it all back home in their ugly AWP tote bag and once back home the poet will gis “AWP” with this suggestive result.
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Late Night Links
Flip Zembowicz has created an interactive character map for A Visit From The Goon Squad. I happened to read this book today so it was fun to stumble across this (via Sarah Malone).
Speaking of Jennifer Egan, she recommends sixty books that have been critical to her in some way.
If you were ever curious about what literary characters throughout history might wear today, there’s a site for that.
The list of panels accepted for AWP has been released.
Tom Lutz’s essay, Future Tense, at the Los Angeles Review of Books, is well worth the read.
Kathy Fish’s Wild Life is available for pre-order by Matter Press.
In the August issue of Bookslut, Elizabeth Buchner writes about reading humiliation.
Lies
Hey, AWP! Which books from the last year are you, when they come up in conversation, pretending to have read? I’ll start, even though I’m not there. If it came up, I’d be telling people I’ve read The Fixed Stars by Brian Conn. (I bought it at AWP last year, started it, enjoyed it, set it aside for something else, and then haven’t gotten back to it. Still, I’d lie and tell everyone I finished it.)
orange crows, where are they?
Snow/ice/snow, it is so funny, like a parfait without a hair in it, but not ha-ha funny like a parfait with a hair. I’m not at AWP. Damn. So I’m thinning mints now, but later I’m going to watch Woody Allen movies on VCR. Also I have a doze to bull, but that’s personal. Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt, has been attacked! Again!! Everyone needs a hobby, OK. The flickering of the VCR, or even hens. The last one on Earth who likes to track? Who here likes to track?
(This post a serious evidence of an earlier A. Robinson post [I researched, but couldn't find] that says HTML people basically post anything)
But hey: What are you doing while not at AWP?
11 Pringle cans of furled knees
14. WTF? I thought Shane Jones killed February? (as noted) Today I learned that freezing rain is different than sleet. The hayseed fear-mongering weatherman just went simile on the ice; he said, “It’s like a candy shell.” Not bad, though a discord of tone. University dismisses the pacing, caged jaguar of classes; milk and bread sales go all Kelly Clarkson; and I wonder how many sit at home on their MePhones? Just years ago would have been a book for every downtime: waiting room while oil is changed, the vehicle registration line, the afternoon at the bar, this big-ass blizzard. Now it’s a phone. Just saying, but not me. I’m about to cuddle up with Into Thin Air and my Hobart flask.
9. To shit you or to shit you not. I shit you not. Reality rajah Mark Burnett is making literary Cliff’s Notes (yes, those little yellow pamphlets that borrow their color scheme from roadsigns) into a TV comedy series. OK.
1. Dawn Raffel at Willow Springs (with all kinds of good extra links).
94. Look here you smarmy-asses: novels in which the author appears as himself!
2. A sudden thought: What if AWP is snowed in and everyone having to sleep on the Book Fair floor curled inside their satchels, lean-tos made of idiosyncratic eyeglasses, perfect-bound tents of spine-broken books? And when the power fails, what book will we burn first for heat?
15 random sentences from Raúl Zurita’s Song for his Disappeared Love
15. Now Zurita – he said – now that you got in here into our nightmares, through pure verse and guts: can you tell me where my son is?
14. It’s not tough not the solitude, nothing has happened and my sleep rises and falls as usual.
13. Now everyone is fallen except for us the fallen.
12. From there the wind blew across the inexistent pampas and as it settled the massacred faces became visible, Amen.
11. For his disappeared love he went form hole to hole, grave to grave, searching for the eyes that don’t find.
10. Everything dies sucking itself.
Raúl Zurita @ AWP
It’s hard to keep track of anything if you’re going to AWP, but here’s one I’m making sure not to miss: Raúl Zurita reading and in conversation Friday at Noon in support of his new book from Action Books, Songs for His Disappeared Love. From Johannes: “This is like getting Neruda to the fucking AWP. This guy spent 6 weeks in a shed being tortured following the Pinochet coup.” More info and locations here.
While you’re at it, come by and say hello as a bunch of us from HTMLGiant will be at a monster table chillin.
What other events are worth seeing?
Obituary: AWP (1967-2010)
AWP (The Association of Writers and Writing Programs) – (1967 to October 25, 2010) One of the longest standing and thereby most-oft-cited-like-prom-in-relation-to-the-space-where-act-is-not-act-but-goober-city events in the lexicon of rising and extending the social life of the author passed away just before someone’s lunch break this afternoon when a mangy maned and business suit clad middle aged man stormed into the AWP offices in Fairfax, Virginia and released an airborne toxin that immediately brought to their knees said officeholders and those in an outlying .5 mile radius of the building. Authorities are still working in their off hours of other atrocities to identify the corpse of the perpetrator despite his wearing a laminated ID tag suspended from a necklanyard relic of the 2010 convention of the AWP faculties and associates in Denver, Colorado, as they quickly found that the name printed on the tag, Alice Munro, was not the perp at all but someone authorities believe may purportedly be a “writer” herself, though not a “writer” capable of such will. A manifesto found on the perp’s body, which was mostly eaten alive by the angry bees attracted by the scent of writer toxin, like sandwich musk and want, while the numerable “highest level” AWP employees, whom no one has ever met, escaped through an unidentified aircraft toward the blinker of the sun never to return, stated the motive for the destruction as such: “I’M FUCKIN SICK O THIS SECRET HANDSHAKE HIPPIE WANKER ASS SHIT WHERE YOU HANDY DANDIES COME AROUND SELLIN YR POETRIES AND YR MAGASHITZINES TO EACH OTHER WHILE WHEN ANYTIME I BRING AROUND MY OWN REALER MAGAZINES AND TALK ABOUT TO TELL YOU WHERE MY LAUNCH PARTY IS AT TONIGHT YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE I’M TREVOR MCDUNNAWAY, WHICH I AM, WHICH TO YOU MEANS SHITZIP AND I’M FUCKIN SICK OF TYPING AND I MISS MY DAD MOTHERFUCKER FUCK WRITING BITTCH YR SERVICES ARE VOID.” Eighteen copies of the remainder of the manifesto, which the perp, who has since been identified not as the aforementioned “TREVOR MCDUNNAWAY” carried on his person extended in one long armreach with a pricetag of $24.95 in softcover with “discount sale!” stickers reducing said price to $22.90, were still held tightly by the author’s corpse against his sternum so well infused that his remains will be cremated, along with the lanyards and programs and attendance roster of the previously planned 2011 convention of AWP to be held in Washington D.C., a fire that burned purple for six hours in the light of the other ashes in our special government atrocity cremation center before finally muttering out into another pile. Subsequent strains of the airborne toxin, briefly considered deadly to all nations, have been found to only affect those of the weakest temperament to sick, via skins of thin mettle and minds of weak acumen predetermined to attend panels on Life Poetics in the Work of Cracker Barrel Anthologies and Nature as Conduit for Metaphor, and even in those few sadly exposed bodies only inducing mild conditions of pasty foreskin/labia, heavy breathing, and sometimes a hunger for flamebroiled meat. Book objects and chapbooks remaining unsold and thereafter abandoned at AWP locations of the past 40 years will be donated to a new, more vital writing services program, where the corpus of such paper will be burned to heat the homes of indigent but still somehow willful writers. Anyone not already involved in publishing their own magazine had no comment on the logically pragmatic death, though remembrance services for Mr. “MCDUNNAWAY” will be held at Shortback Books in downtown Presererancese, Wisconsin featuring readings by Bob Hicok and Steve Almond. Remembrance services for AWP will take place over the next two to seven years as longtime members, attendants, would-that-I-were-not-married-I-could-have-gotten-out-there-cuz-I-hear-sometimes-there-are-people-there-who-both-like-books-and-will-fuck persons, and please-emblazon-my-name-on-your-paper-I’ll-do-anything-even-though-there’s-nothing-to-do-but-keep-pretending-I’m-listening-and-shake-some-hands-with-eyes-averted-and-keep-drinking hucksters spread the flame of memory from one to another via the age-old echo party celebration cue, “Are you going to you AWP?,” which regrettably this year must be answered by one and all, “I can’t.”
All White People, Indeed
Now that I’ve had a couple weeks to catch up on life post-AWP, I’ve had time to reflect on my experience attending the conference a second time. I had a fantastic time at AWP ’10. It’s a much better experience when you actually know people; I really enjoyed working at the bookfair with my co-editor and meeting so many contributors; and there was, of course, the EPIC dance party on Saturday night that was everything I had been told it would be and so much more. You have not lived until you see a bunch of hot, sweaty writers dancing awkwardly (myself included), and I do mean awkwardly, to Tone Loc.
At several points during AWP, friends and acquaintances would riff on the theme of AWP standing for All White People and we would laugh and move on to the next topic of conversation but there was a certain truth to the comments that was… uncomfortable.
Photo Album: (a small cross-section of) My AWP
Here are some pictures I shot over the course of the AWP conference, which took place in Denver, Colorado, April 7 – 10, 2010.
SkyMall and the Emerging Writer Image
I can scarcely believe I have never ordered anything from SkyMall. Shopping for ill-advised items—particularly while intoxicated—is what I do best (for example, coming out of a bourbon fog at 3 a.m. and waking up to an infomercial for a personal massage device called the Dr. Ho. Its creator, the human Dr. Ho, has a braid down to the middle of his back and is wearing nothing but biker shorts. I call in and buy one immediately. When it arrives, it does little more than deliver a series of painful electric shocks that feel like bites from a robotic gerbil).
And I am a nervous flier (read: sedatives). You’d think I already would’ve ordered the Bigfoot Garden Yeti Sculpture in slurred speech while suspended 32,000 feet above the ground. The problem is that to order on the plane, one has to pick up The Phone That Lives Inside The Seat. I have a lot of anxiety about doing this. Buried snugly inside the cushion, its curved receiver looks like the fossil of a slender bone that should not be disturbed. Were I to pick it up with fluffy clouds just outside the window to my left, I fear the voice of a deceased relative would be on the other end via some weird heavenly reception, or that my call would be promptly and embarrassingly connected directly to the pilot. Or something even weirder: no voice at all, just heavy breathing that would prompt me to respond “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret” in a shaky voice and to waft my remaining drink vouchers above my head like they’re Wonka’s golden ticket.
But returning home from AWP, I glanced at SkyMall’s pages with a new mission: how might an emerging writer come to stick out at these conferences? I needed some kind of gimmick, some angle. Then I saw it: the travel bidet.
Yes, I realized. I could be the writer who carries around a travel bidet in a small pink suitcase at all times. When people say, “Who is Alissa Nutting?” others could then answer with certainty: “She is that writer who carries around a travel bidet.” It sounds pretty great; the description promises that “this little wonder, which comes with its own handy travel pouch, provides a refreshing, pulsating spray of water just where and when you need it.” The bidet sales-pitch informs me of the link between sanitation and ego: “personal appearance starts with personal hygiene, something people don’t always like to talk about but that is at the cornerstone of our self-image.” The write-up also assures me that not being comfortable “can affect our performance and self-confidence in important business and social functions.” Where was this little gadget before my panel??!?
I will BeDazzle my bidet briefcase. I will spend all year BeDazzling it, and when I get to AWP 2011, I will be the most confident writer in the room. What worries me is that people might be reluctant to shake my hand, or hug me, when I am carrying my bidet briefcase. This makes no sense because I will actually have a superior level of cleanliness. Perhaps I can write this in jewels across the case-top: FEEL FREE TO SHAKE MY HAND, I AM ACTUALLY CLEANER THAN YOU ARE.
Back from AWP.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3zjG9xRg5E
It is Friday (not–I was at awp, so flight-wobbly): Go Right Ahead.
Friendlier, prettier, smarter. This illusion.
My beard grew wild, as did my waistline.
The way I write these aren’t like the way I told you I write these…
Imagined dignities.
AWP with 6$ plastic bottles of gnu pee.
Pour down a tall wine or two for ballast.
Drink. Love you, don’t like you.
Frogs. I like the attitude of frogs.
It was a night jump and I was drunk.
Prick-points of sensation. Get it?
Clinically, you know…
I will fucking stop for cornbread!
Like those balloons.
Barbaric AWP: WWWWD in Denver?
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 READ MORE >
HTML Giant @ AWP: We Global
Here I will attempt to give readers a list of the HTML Giant-related AWP readings. (AWP is in Denver, April 7 – 10.)
Wednesday, April 7:
We arrive. We wait.
READ MORE >
Roxane Gay—
The tenth National Black Writer’s Conference is taking place March 25-28. Tayari Jones, Colson Whitehead, and Edwidge Danticat, among others will be participating. If you’re in NYC you might want to check it out. The conference is open to all and the panels look really interesting. Every time I hear someone say there aren’t many black writers I think, what on earth are you talking about?
I’m pretty sure most of these people will not be attending AWP. That’s worth talking about at some point.
