Julia’s Friday Journal from AWP:
I awoke Friday morning to turn on the television in my hotel room and learn of the plane crash in New York. Terrible. And now I am starting to believe that somehow there is a correlation between me traveling and plane crashes in New York. You’re laughing, I know. But I went to Memphis around the time when that plane went down in the Hudson River. When I went to Las Vegas back in November of 2001, a plane went down in that Queens neighborhood. And when I was in New York City for a conference in September 2001, the planes hit the WorldTradeCenter. It’s starting to give me a complex. I have to remind myself of all the other times I have traveled and nothing’s happened. But wtf? Why New York?
Seeing a message in airplanes was yet another Mrs. Dalloway parallel. My week had so many parallels with that book—even including a suicide in the story. We’ll get to that. I probably should finish my tale in that voice. But who has the time? And for what purpose?
I discovered that the oatmeal and Starbucks is delicious, healthy, satisfying and much cheaper than buying breakfast out anywhere else. I had it every day. Tell ‘em Julia sent you.
Once I got down to the Chicago Hilton for the conference, I began texting my friends. Michael Nye of River Styx and I were in constant communication, yet never could catch each other. I slid into the “Reinventing the Memoir” workshop and was blown away. So much good stuff! Every session seemed to be so much more than just the title. I took a lot of notes and have filled a whole tablet of legal paper. I’ll transcribe and post it all, eventually.
I came out of that workshop having written: what is art supposed to do? what can I teach myself through writing?
So then I skipped over to one of the larger ballrooms to see one of my poetic heroes, Kim Addonizio, talk about Compiling Anthologies. If you’re not familiar with Kim, she is oh-so cool. If I liked women, I would be in love with her. It was about two degrees outside, yet she wore a bright Valentine-red tank top that showed off her tattoos. She is forthright and funny and no-BS, and, really, just such a damn great poet. After learning of all the hassles and paperwork through her session, I realized that I will probably never compile an anthology. I also realized that I’m actually quite lucky to already be in a few without having to have gone through any contractual hoops or even, gasp, fees! There is something sick and wrong about paying to be published. I suppose it’s like my band friends paying to play in nightclubs in LA.
After Kim was done with her part, I decided that was enough about that, and I skipped over to the “Page to Stage” playwriting workshop. But that was not exactly what I thought it would be, either. I took a few notes, as I’m interested in playwriting. But the previous hours had been so riveting, and it felt like a disappointment to hit a part in the schedule that wasn’t on par with what I’d had so far.
I’d heard great things about the Book Fair, but hadn’t found the time to go down, so I figured this slow session was as good a way as any to spend my last thirty minutes.
The room was huge and filled with a sea of hundreds of tables, piled with thousands of books and more faces than I could ever focus on. I drifted aimlessly, to pick a place to begin. At the first table I came to, I looked down, and there was a book by an obscure old philosopher whose work I continually keep coming across in my Plath project. I’d quoted him numerous times as he supported my theory, but I could find no direct connection from him to Sylvia Plath. Here it was. The book, which had first been printed in her lifetime and was reprinted by this small press, was illustrated by an artist that I know Plath was greatly influenced by! There was my direct line. This united everything.
Thank you, Sylvia.
Upon Finding the Book, X:
The first book I saw
on the first table that called. One
of hundreds. Angels sang
through the swarmy drove
torn by sylvan light. Again
she places her hand on me.
Verification. I am
where, what and doing all
I need to be.
--jgb
The afternoon continued with a good session, “Where Parallel Lines Meet”; more about genre-mixing. I ran into my colleague, G., from the program. I was so happy to see her! A familiar face! We swapped phone numbers to text and met up in the Story: The Heart of the Matter class. She laughed at me.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You’re so consistent,” she said. “Look at your notes! Look at your schedule! You want to do everything.”
“It’s the brighter side of the addictive personality,” I said.
It was nearly impossible to get around the floors of the hotel between the conference sessions. Lines for the elevators were horrendous. The lines were twenty minutes long to buy coffee. There were twenty minute lines to pee. I learned to hold it and do without.
G. and I went our separate ways; she, leaning toward fiction and me gobbling up poetry, and so I was alone again. By 2 p.m. I was famished. I couldn’t see paying $20 for admission to the fancy hotel luncheons I had no interest in. I went across the street to Harold’s Chicken Shack, where a Latina with a bad attitude and drawn-on eyebrows commanded me to hurry it up and give her my order. I had no idea what I was even asking for, I just said “white meat chicken dinner”. In moments they threw a paper bag at me and I was good to go. I took it back to the hotel lobby (there were no free seats at Harold’s), and opened it up. I had a plate of French fries I didn’t touch, two pieces of greased white wonder bread (went right in the trash), a dollop of (actually delicious) cole slaw, and two pieces of the best fried chicken I’ve ever tasted, for $5. It was worth the abuse.
After lunch, I ran into Amy from River Styx, who wasn’t attending the conference, but just came up to hang at the free readings and crash the after-parties. Cool. I wish some of my friends outside the program had done that. I think it would have been pretty easy to sneak into, too. It didn’t seem like anyone was checking for passes anywhere, and the crowds were insane. Who could notice?
At 3 p.m., I had to decide whether to attend the reading of a bunch of amazing fiction writers, including Bharati Mukherjee, or 2 amazing poets, Frank Bidart and Mary Jo Bang. I’ve studied them all.
Fiction, I thought. I have been giving too much time to poetry. I found a seat in the Grand Ballroom, set my coat on the back of it, texted a couple of friends, only to have a last-minute freakout and race over to the International Ballroom, for the poetry.
This is what it’s like to be me.
Fellow St. Louisian Mary Jo Bang, who directs the Creative Writing program at WashingtonUniversity, really is terrific. But by her second poem, I was lost in writing one of my own:
After Hearing Mary Jo Bang’s Elegy Poems On The Death Of Her Son
For Sam
(subject to many future revisions)
Embrace cremation;
boxing of that broken down,
Flame’s last shush of the silent.
No decisions left but the
greening of the grayed.
Heat for cold. Flesh,
teeth and bones in the crunch
of dust. Reject that ridiculous
pomp and preening
sick stiff formaldehyde embalming
before the eye
lid of the future closed. Those
shut darkened windows try
at frozen time with waxed skin;
the halt of death rots
buried, like guilt. But not
you, stay a firm, unripe peach.
Twin, fixed stars wearing my same hazel. Still
permanent option of changeable decisions,
rooted booming loud beauty
soft beneath a smatter of whisker. On that
unspeakable moment, I say
Better:Me. A thousand mes, please.
Breathe in my every unlived day,
renew my history too. Just
Better me.
Never
you. Forever,
never
you.
-jgb
Poet Frank Bidart was a hypnotist, and I was lost in the dream. He read a sestina, called “If See No End In Is” and introducing it, “It is my only sestina. It is my last sestina.”
Bidart had a long, long line for booksigning. I ran into Sally van Doren and was delighted that she knew who I was and cared enough to smalltalk a moment. Whoopee!
Next, I found myself in another workshop, and I don’t remember what it was, except that I noted the reader’s name was David. He was very animated, and there was something about him that was so familiar. My mind began to drift to the last AWP conference I attended, forever ago, in the mid-1990s, in Pittsburgh. I thought about this poet I knew, who was there at the same time, who in younger years, looked like this David-guy speaking. But back in Pittsburgh, in 1994, maybe, both of us were married (today, both of those spouses are gone, although I’m remarried). He chased me around the Oakland neighborhood suggesting that we have an affair. Not saying it like that, of course. More like, “I’d like to know what you look like when you first awaken” or, “We are a good match, you and I”, or “Why don’t you come back to my room and fuck me?”
I declined his generous offer, and have never regretted that decision. He’s a good poet, but that didn’t make him fuckable.
Meanwhile, back in the present, the guy, David was reading a poem that sounded like prose--and not even good prose. But maybe my mood had soured from that memory. I raced back over to catch Kim Addonizio do a reading this time.
Doing all new stuff, her work is so smart and hip. She is another voice I could never be. Midway through one particularly raunchy street poem, she stopped the deaf interpreter, asking to see the gestures for the words “slut”, “Quaalude,” “vibrator” and “dildo.” Everyone was in hysterics. Then, Kim broke out the harmonica and played a rocking bluesy number before giving out goodie bags. It was a party!
I was going to run up to the 8th floor to catch the end of Steve Almond, whom I’ve had a literary crush on for the last ten years, thanks to My Life in Heavy Metal and Candy Freak. I’d been subscribing to his email music reviews (“The Tip”), I’d met him on the Candy Freak book tour, and was a bit smitten after he plied me with dark chocolate mint Kit Kats and Mallo-Mars. But if I left Kim’s shindig early, I’d miss out on getting one of her free goodie bags with spoken-word CDs and mini-candy bars. I considered that I’d missed half his session already. I considered that Kim’s session was good enough. I stayed and got my goodie bag.
Another author got up to read. I won’t name names, but his poems were sort of Shel Silverstein-ish in sound and structure, only darker. They were a history of abuse alchemized into sarcastic funnies. More poem than prose, but still not pushing into any new territory, as far as I could tell. He read twice as long as the others and it appeared arrogant, conceited, and disrespectful.
I will never do that.
Is there such a thing as a brief-residency or low-residency PhD in Creative Writing? It’s probably not possible, because of the teaching component. Still, I wonder…
Molly Peacock read next; 5 poems, each a variation on the sonnet. Her theme was ‘mistakes’. I caught her at River Styx last year. She is hyper-dramatic and I usually like to read her better than to listen to her. It can feel too over the top to see it all acted out like that. But her words and imagery is so good.
Speaking of River Styx readers, I saw Oliver de Paz, but he was eating, and I didn’t want to interrupt. I continued to find almost no familiar faces, except for strangers I’d stood in line with for the restroom, or sat beside in session. There was the stylish gay boy with the green scarf, and that cool biracial chick with the nose piercing. But never my friends! Where were my friends?
I skipped out right after the session to pick up Tom from MidwayAirport, and then meet my brother and his girlfriend again for dinner. We commiserated on our miserable thyroids, for which my prescription has been changed again.
“That’s the thing about us S [my maiden name] kids,” David said. “I mean, face it. We’ve got it all—looks, brains, charm, wit…but we’ve also got really fucked up thyroids.” Ha.
My brother David is the funniest guy you will ever meet. My notes don’t do him justice.
Forthcoming: the Saturday-Sunday Journal