225: AWP, Day 3

Top to bottom: Carolyn Forche + Nick Flynn, Nick Flynn, Carolyn Forche, Donald Hall, Honor Moore

Switching Hats: When Poets Write Memoir. (Alison Granucci, Nick Flynn, Carolyn Forché, Honor Moore, Donald Hall) These renowned writers traverse both in the genre of poetry and creative nonfiction. When poets write memoirs, with voices both similar and different to those in their poems, they go deeper into the narrative thread, remembering and telling, using the memoir as different mode of travel through the creative terrain. Please join us on a journey through faith and sexuality, race and addiction, and testimonies from war prisoners in this celebration of courage and versatility.

Top to Bottom: Rachel Zucker, Carl Phillips, Erin Belieu

Beyond The Song of Oneself: The Intersection of the Personal and the Public in Poetry. (D. A. Powell, Erin Belieu, Rachel Zucker, Carl Phillips, Josh Bell) "...how can anyone be more amusing than oneself/how can anyone fail to be"—Frank O'Hara. One of the chief difficulties in writing personal lyric poetry is the construction of a self who acts as speaker, participant, and/or eye of the poem. How does the intensely personal exist in a public space, and what are the strategies for translating the personal into the universal? How does the poet invite the reader to inhabit or share the consciousness of the self presented in the poem, whether through first-person or through some other version of a self. Is poetry by nature a solipsistic art, regardless of pronouns—and, if so, is there a set of methods by which that emphasis upon the poet's life is mitigated, challenged or out-maneuvered? Five contemporary poets of various aesthetics read from their work and discuss the ways in which they grapple with the problematic relationship between the consciousness of the poem and the mind of the poet.

Top to Bottom: Tony Hoagland, Sophie Cabot Black, Tree Swenson, Elise Paschen, Victoria Redel, Marie Howe

Tribute to Jason Shinder. (Tony Hoagland, Marie Howe, Sophie Cabot Black, Victoria Redel, Tree Swenson, Elise Paschen) Jason Shinder was a tremendous force for poetry, through his own deeply-felt art and his passionate support for the art of others. This reading by Jason's friends and fellow poets pays tribute to his humor, to his poetry, to his enduring spirit, and to his life.

Again, so much over-stimulation, but I knew it would happen. I tried to limit myself to three panels today, but still, my brain bubbles over: poets whose work I obviously need to explore, considering the self within a work of poetry, and the giddy high of meeting some fabulous writers (Donald Hall!) and being called "my Molly" by Carolyn Forche and told I need to send her some poems (eep).

Each night I've been here, my mind pin-balls through all kinds of thoughts: the cleaning of our backyard, missing the pups and Ryan, points brought up in the panels, getting my books to my car, paying for the hotel, reading student essays, reading books for the class I'm teaching, reading the books for the classes I'm taking, writing my literary journalism piece (on Alzheimer's, I have decided), the people I've met, the emails I need to send, the poems I want to read, the poems I want to write.

And yes, more images here.