Second report from Austin – Woke up late this morning so I’ll have to make this short – yesterday, went first thing to a reading by Alice James Books. I was hoping to say hi to Brian Turner, but he was sick and couldn’t be there, but I did get to see Anne Marie Macari (though I didn’t get to say hi! sorry Lana!) and this really amazing poet I had never heard of named Lesle Lewis who read from a book of prose poems – it had kind of a Brigit Pegeen Kelly feel, but not as dark, a nice blend of narrative and lyric, so I went up and bought her book (even though I told myself no books – I have so many in my stacks at home! and I have to fly with this stuff…argh! no self control.) I ran into my old professor Don Bogen at the reading and took him out to lunch with Glenn at a little Cajun place – it was really fun to catch up with him. We discussed how weird it was that when I went to U of Cinci for my Master’s program it was an all-white-male poetry faculty and the program had sort of a formalist bent – now they’ve hired a young woman professor who is an experimental type and she has really brought a lot of energy to the program – and they have an active literary mag for the students to work with too, the Cincinnati Review. So the program has been “hipped up” (hmm, is that a real word?) since I was there. And we talked about his publisher, Wesleyan, and his experiences with them, and what to expect from publishing a book in general, etc.
Then went to the early afternoon reading by Runes (a bunch of great readers including Ilya again and Kim Addonizio) and took a break until running to the Tupelo party where I ran into Aimee Nez and her charming husband which was great fun (and they had great food – too bad I had settled for room service beforehand) and then ran back for the AWP reading – a weird pairing of Naomi Shihab Nye and Tony Hoagland – I loved seeing Tony read, who was exactly as I had pictured him, then afterwards went to a bar with fiddling poets – including Molly Tenenbaum and KenWaldman. Today I’m going to try to catch Charles Jensen’s reading with Bloom and spend more time at the book fair and make the 8:30 PM reading – Marie Howe is one of the readers, and I love her book “What the Living Do.” Then, if I’m still alive after that, Reb Livingston’s party…so…tired…One funny thing is how many people have come up and said “Oh, I remember such-and-such from your blog…” I know I’ve said it to people here too, it’s just funny (and disconcerting) to have such a community built on the web rather than in person. All the bloggers I’ve met have been wonderful folks, even nicer than you would guess from their online journals. Will try to give a report on today’s stuff before I leave for home tomorrow…