Despite having to spend an unexpected $400 on my car on the way back from West Chester, I'm going to be high for a month. The readings were wonderful and the panels I saw were stimulating — Rhina Espaillat was wonderful on the Religion and Poetry panel, but afterwards Annie Finch correctly commented that it should have been called Christianity and Poetry. Christian Wiman's workshop on Poetic Line was wonderful not just because he liked some of my poems (yippee!) but because of the quality of discussion with Deborah Warren, Cathryn Essinger, Bill Byers, Alfred Nicol, Myrna Stone, Charlotte Innes, Chelsea Rathburn, Gretel Claggett, and Cindy whose last name I can't find. I met Annie Finch and she's read this blog — "Oh, you're the Mike Snider!" and then, again correctly, called me on some unfair things I was saying to Dana Gioia about Ron Silliman. I saw old friend Fred Turner for the first time in 27 years; I spoke a little with Rafael Campo, Tony Barnstone, Marisa de los Santos, Alicia Stallings, Robert Shaw, B. F. Fairchild, Moira Egan (who knows both Cary and Ridge!), Tim Steele, Dick Davis, R. S. Gwynn, and Rhina Espaillat; I played music with Kim Addonizio, David Yezzi, Rachel (Aumiller?), and Austin (MacRae?); from blogland, I met Steve Schroeder and spent some time with Robin Kemp and Mary Agner; I met David Anthony and Terese Coe from Eratosphere; I met and talked a good deal with Bob Cumming, who runs Iris Press; I caught up with old West Chester friends Robert Abbate, Arnie Johanson, Mike Riley, Robert Darling, Wendy Sloane, Richard Attanasio, and Len Krisak — and I need to stop and say this isn't remotely an exhaustive list of the amazingly talented and almost overwhelming company there. But I am exhausted. In the next few days I'll try to say more useful things about the conference, but it may be the weekend before I can do say much more than "wow!".
And I missed Anthony Hecht and Michael Donaghy terribly, as did the whole gathering.
9:28:23 PM 
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