AWP

I am interested to read all these blog entries criticizing the AWP. Yes, it's backwards and almost all of the panels were probably useless. But I went to an inspiring panel on Latin American poetry in translation - I came out of that with electricity sparkling in my brain.

That was the only panel I went to, but I had a lot of very interesting and inspiring exchanges with various poets and translators. I saw Abe Smith read, I talked with Sergio Bessa and a guy named Siddharta about Brazilian poetry, I talked with William Howe about performance and teaching performance, I talked to Steve Bradbury about Taiwanese poetry. Etc. It was a wonderful learning/artistic experience that way.

And at the book fair I was able to talk to people I had never met about Dadaism and Swedish poetry and Finland Swedish Modernism etc. I hatched tons of plans and collaboration-conspiracies. I sold tons of books to people I don't think even know about our books, people who would not have found out about our books without the AWP.