More AWP and Ilya…

I just have to say this first – Ilya’s workshop is the first time that any workshop leader has ever invited me to dance during a break. Real Waltz-type dancing. Dancing in Odessa…he wasn’t kidding! But seriously, Ilya was totally sweet and very very intense. We had a two hour workshop (some very very impressive poets among my workshop group whose names I can’t find right now) and then these individual conferences where he did a great job with line edits and suggestions and pep talking etc. I mean, twenty minutes and I forgot about the sixteen million hours of driving in the past 24 hours and four hours of sleep the night before. He made a point of telling us to be more ambitious, to write about bigger subjects, to try a series of poems, to write about “America” and I even made some notes towards future poems while he was talking, he was very inspiring that way. I don’t usually think about the difference between “big” and “small” subjects but he talked about that at length, and also about “cold” poetry like Wallace Stevens and Elizabeth Bishop and “warm” poetry. He did suggest I put an exclamation point in my poem, but I forgive him for that, because his other suggestions were spot on. Imagine me putting exclamation points in a poem around anything not having to do with lipstick. Or possibly, boots. Hey, I was raised in the Midwest – we don’t put exclamation points in our poems even if we’ve just been stabbed. Blogs, maybe, but never poems.
Speaking of that, everyone’s talking about how polite and friendly Vancouver was, but I have to say I encountered quite a few of the rudest people ever (not at the conference, more generally) and my friend (coincidentally, Midwestern) from my MFA program, who was staying a few blocks away from the conference, encountered a glass-shard stabbing in progress on her walk home one night. So, I don’t know, I still vote for Seattle over Vancouver – I’ve seen drug deals galore here, but never a glass-shard stabbing. Plus, as we drove home, I noticed how the rain cleared as we neared my little rented home, and sure enough, sunshine as we got in the driveway. I also want to issue an apology on behalf of the big-rainy-left-upper-corner to all who had trouble getting home (Shanna, Paul, etc.) – it sucks getting to and from anywhere in the Pacific Northwest via plane. I have had too many bad airport experiences here to even count, and I’ve tried Seattle’s airport, Portland, and Vancouver, numerous airlines, etc. What can I say? It’s like we have our own little Newark airport spirits out here.
Back to AWP…OK, first of all, I don’t think I mentioned in my last post how very attractive all the bloggers I met were in person. Everyone was way cuter than their pictures. And also interesting and friendly, the kind of people you’d invite over for pizza and xbox but could still talk to til 3 AM about “important subjects,” you know? Also I’d like to give the friendliest editor award (and there was a lot of competition) to Marjorie Manwaring from Switched On Gutenberg, who I met during an otherwise-kind-of-so-so panel on workshops and was just bowled over by how fun she was. I saw very little swanning or excessive schmoozing this year, overall. Last year’s AWP felt very intimidating and more business-like, but this one felt more genuinely good-will-full. Maybe it was all the Northwesterners. They are a gregarious and laid back group. The bookfair was wonderful, I spent a ton of time there and had a lot of fun just paging through books I had heard of but had never had a chance to get my hands on, even with my very own poetry bookstore in our backyard. I encouraged many publishers to send more of their books to Open Books in Seattle, it was surprising how few people knew about it, because hey – a poetry-only bookstore – everyone should know!
Another nice thing about the conference was how encouraging most of the publishers and editors were, as opposed to, say, yelling “Jeannine, quit sending us your damn work!” which is what I picture them saying when I lose a contest or get a rejections slip. Apparently, those who remembered my work wanted me to send again. It’s so funny, because usually one rejection slip is enough to scare me off a magazine for years – I’m like, yep, they hate me and my work, what’s the point of sending there again, etc. So, I had to remind myself to get over myself and not have such a fragile ego. Lots of poets out there, lots of them are really good, so persistence seems to be part of the deal. The other good thing I got out of talking to publishers was a sense of economically the problems with publishing poetry – the problem of debt, not selling enough copies of poetry books for them to be affordable to publish, the lack of support, the lack of audience, etc. One publisher suggested a “non-fiction hook,” like including music or non-fiction or artwork in books of poetry. I would like to become a poetry publisher someday and I’m trying to get a sense of what makes a publisher successful or not. I think active promotion of authors must help both the authors and the publishers – readings, book parties, ads, etc…Red Hen and Tupelo seem to be two publishers who are really good at that part – but there’s more – it’s sensing which book will connect with an audience and then how to get that book in front of said audience. Interestingly problematic. I am always dragging people who think they hate poetry to poetry readings that they end up loving and giving books of poetry to people who are genuinely surprised by how much they end up liking the books. You poets out there teaching freshman English 101 are part of it too, considering the problem of how to introduce people to poetry in an appealing way, and the high-school teachers, and the people that donate poetry subscriptions to libraries. Matthew Shindell is doing an innovative radio show in San Diego (click on his blog link at left and send him some poem recordings) and it will be interesting to see how those poems are received by the listeners. Will they be like, shut the poets up and play more music? Which poems might they connect to? On the drive home from Vancouver my family back in Cinci huddled around one computer listening to the show included me by calling me on my cell phone and holding their phone up to the computer while they made commentaries on the show. Some poets they liked, others they hated. It felt like the 1890s, somehow, listening to poetry on the radio, as a group, and my family is made up of robot scientists, corporate trainers, dojo-running graphic designers, and telecom network administrators, not the typical poetry audience, so it was good to hear their feedback.
Anyway, yup, getting audiences interested in poetry, how to do it, etc…any ideas? It is poetry month after all, if we can’t talk about it now, then when?