Friday, March 29, 2013

Writers I Can't Stop Reading, Part 1: Introduction

There are certain writers that I start reading, and once I dig into that person’s work, I can’t stop. I have to read all of it. For each writer I feel that way about, there’s a different reason the work is appealing to me.

Then there are other writers I read because someone recommended their work, or I saw an enthusiastic review. I read one book by that author. I might even enjoy the book, but I feel one is enough. I don’t get the sense that I need to know more about that writer’s project or style. I imagine many writers must have those differing responses to what they read. Some writers grab us by the collar and drag us down, and we can’t get loose. Others just give us a sweet little peck on the cheek and bid us farewell.

The writers where I have to read all they wrote, or almost all, are writers who can do something I can’t, or have a quality I’d love to have. I even want to be that writer, at least while I’m reading a book by that author. Sometimes the quality I admire most in that writer is one I hope to emulate. Other times, it’s one I would like to emulate but know I never can. They are just too good at what they do.

In the next few blogs I’m going to discuss some of the writers whose work really grabs me, and why, and some of the writers whose work feels as if I like it, but I don’t need more of it. What differentiates those two types of writers?

T he writers I plan to discuss in this series of blogs include George Orwell, Willa CatherVirginia Woolf,  June Jordan, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Other recent posts about writing topics: 
How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry? 
Poetic Forms: IntroductionThe SonnetThe SestinaThe GhazalThe Tanka

Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer




Sunday, March 24, 2013

How Do You Get Good Creative Ideas?

Creative ideas originate from the natural siftings of thoughts that take place in our minds. We’re all constantly sorting through random phrases and images that cycle through our brains. It’s a bit like the process of leafing through your photos on a personal computer, or on a smartphone. One thought leads to another in a somewhat arbitrary series of links and responses to external stimuli. The trick in coming up with a creative idea you can use in your writing is to differentiate from your other random thoughts, and then seize on that good idea when it occurs. Immediately begin to identify and/or develop it. If you can’t, write it down electronically or in a notebook, so it doesn’t dissolve back into the bubbling brew of your mind.

Here’s an example. The other day I was driving to pick up my son from school, listening to radio station KCSM, the jazz station in the San Francisco Bay Area. I don’t even remember what I was listening to, but it made me think of the way that your intelligence is supposed to improve when you listen to music. The original study of this, I remembered, had to do with children listening to Mozart. Then I started remembering a story I’d read in the magazine Catamaran Literary Reader about endangered California condors and how large their eggs were, almost like dinosaur eggs. That led to a thought about the movie Jurassic Park and cloning dinosaurs, and before I knew it was thinking about the possibility that scientists could actually clone humans who had lived in the past from a lock of their hair, and that took me to the idea of cloning Mozart.

I realized that small thought was different from just repetitions of what I’d previously read or seen. That's key in recognizing a creative idea. That thought took me to an idea of a short story about cloning Mozart. Getting an idea like that is like trying to peel off a clear plastic sticker from its adhesive back. It’s incredibly difficult to get the edge of the sticker to separate. You finally get just a tiny corner to come free, and you have to stick your fingernail in as fast as you can before that sticker flops onto the back again. Once you’ve got your fingernail under it, you have to keep disengaging the thought from the background of shifting thoughts that it appears on.

So my thought about cloning Mozart immediately took me to the question of who would raise him? Wouldn’t they choose a musical family in Austria who could cultivate him to become a classical musician? But what about siblings? Maybe the siblings might already be musical and grow jealous of young Mozart II. That and the parents over-bearing insistence that he be again the prodigy he was capable of becoming might cause him to rebel, to become an unsuccessful bebop saxophonist trying in vain to imitate Charlie Parker, and then maybe to renounce music altogether and settle in Flagstaff, Arizona, to become a dry wall specialist.

When I got home, before I started writing the story, I Googled “cloning Mozart,” and discovered that a writer named Jonathan Rausch had already had this idea and developed it far more thoroughly that I could’ve, as “In 2003, They Secretly Cloned Mozart.” Rausch added many wrinkles I wouldn’t have thought of, such as a Czech billionaire who undertook this project in secret in order to get Mozart to finish his never-completed Requiem. OK, so it wasn’t the most original idea, but the point is, to get a creative idea, you have to stand just a bit outside your own thoughts and casually pay meticulous attention to them, so you know when you’ve got a fish on the line, an idea you've never heard of before, and one that readily lends itself to development. When you feel that nibble, don’t walk away, make sure you reel it in.


Other recent posts about writing topics: 
How to Get Published: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4 
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8Part 9Part 10
Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7
Working with a Writing Mentor: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1Part 2, Part 3Part 4Part 5, Part 6
Why Write Poetry? Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4
Using Poetic Forms, Part 1: Introduction; Part 2: The Sonnet; Part 3, The Sestina;
Part 4, The Ghazal; Part 5, The Tanka

Monday, March 18, 2013

How to Deliver Your Message, Part 6: Irony

Irony is one of the sharpest tools at the disposal of a writer. Essentially, irony means saying the opposite of what you are conveying, but with a wink to the reader so it’s understood that you’re actually advocating the contrary of your surface message. The enormous advantages of irony over preaching to your audience are that irony entertains, uses humor to disarm the reader’s defenses, and still strikes right to the heart. 

One of the most famous examples of irony is Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, subtitled For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. Even the title is devastatingly ironic. Swift published this short essay as a pamphlet in 1729 at a time when dire poverty was common in his native Ireland, and there was no safety net for the poor, who often faced starvation, disease, and freezing weather with no protection or remedy.

Swift pretended to present his solution to this poverty in the voice of an optimistic do-gooder. The narrator proposes fattening children to the age of one year so they can be sold as food for the rich: “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.” The reader has to laugh, but behind that chuckle is the unsettling thought that this is really what it has come to: children are so poorly provided for that eating them almost seems like an plausible alternative.

Part of the brilliance and hilarity of this essay is that Swift never stops acting his part. He always speaks in the voice of the concerned citizen, acting the hopeful social engineer who believes that his solution will work: “I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.”

When is it appropriate to use the sort of wry humor Swift employs so successfully? As the poet Chana Bloch commented on the subject of irony in discussing the Yiddish poet Jacob Glatstein, "It's a defense mechanism, a coping mechanism: the more harrowing the context, the more threatening the circumstance, the sharper the irony." The powerless have power when they wield the blade of irony.

Many writers who lived under communism in Eastern Europe were experts with the razor of irony. The poet Wislawa Szymborska was particularly good at playing the role of the naive speaker whose words were just a bit suspect. One great example is her poem “True Love,” which pretends to be an argument against romantic relationships:

True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

Another great example of irony in Eastern European literature is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s chapter in The Gulag Archipelago on “The Ships of the Archipelago.” In this section Solzhenytsin describes the railroad cars used to transport prisoners to Siberia, or from prison to prison, during the worst days of the Stalinist purges in Russia. The conditions he narrates are almost unbearable to read: the crowding worse than any zoo, the disease-ridden water, the lack of toilets or time to meet basic human functions, the brutality of the guards. It would be intolerable to read these details, except that Solzhenitsyn strangely takes the side of the guards against the prisoners. Of course the guards’ behavior is understandable, he argues, because there is no alternative. Instead of hauling fresh water from farther away, why shouldn’t they give the prisoners the more accessible water from the locomotive tender that is “yellow and murky, with some lubricating grease mixed in with it.” Makes perfect sense, right? And, he adds, “why should a Soviet soldier have to carry water like a donkey for enemies of the people?” Solzhenytsin’s argument is close to plausible, so the irony makes us even more acutely aware of how unjustifiable such treatment is. The humor of this completely unexpected argument allows the unendurable information conveyed to be not only readable, but entertaining.

Other recent posts about writing topics: 
How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
How to Get Published: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4 
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8Part 9Part 10
Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7
Working with a Writing Mentor: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Why Write Poetry? Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4
Using Poetic Forms, Part 1: Introduction; Part 2: The Sonnet; Part 3, The Sestina;
Part 4, The Ghazal; Part 5, The Tanka


Tuesday, March 12, 2013

How to Deliver Your Message, Part 5: Summon the Winds of Righteousness

There is another way to deliver a message that I haven’t discussed yet.
It’s not an easy topic to approach for me in this context because I’ve
taken great pains in this series of blogs to rail against wielding a
message like a blunt weapon. But the kind of writing I’m going to discuss
in this blog isn’t didactic, even though it makes its point fairly
directly. When done right, it’s one of the most effective forms of writing
I know.

This means of delivering a message is to focus on an injustice or a wrong
that the writer feels acutely. It doesn’t have to be an injustice or wrong
the author has experienced personally, but it has to be one that comes
from a writer’s very core. Rather than testify individually, the writer
becomes like a prosecutor, calling witnesses, introducing evidence,
creating a watertight case that the reader will then be asked to decide,
like a jury.

It’s not a simple way to write, because an unskilled or naïve writer can
easily fall from righteousness into self-righteousness. The writer has to
have some moral standing to argue this particular case, as certain
attorneys can only argue a case before the Supreme Court of the U.S.A. if
they fulfill certain requirements.

Two poets who use this strategy exceedingly well are Linda McCarriston and
June Jordan. Both have written incredibly eloquently about mothers. June
Jordan wrote about mothers in “Getting Down to Get Over,” among other
poems. “Getting Down to Get Over” is a hymn to African American women, not
just Jordan’s own mother. We feel the poet’s intimate connection with this
subject in these lines:

Consider the Queen

she fix the cufflinks
on his Sunday shirt
and fry some chicken
bake some cake
and tell the family
“Never mind about the bossman
don’ know how a human
bein spozed to act.…”

June Jordan isn’t mouthing platitudes about how racial and class
inequality are bad. She has known this woman, and she has measured the
weight of her suffering and her dignity. Even though this poem has a
message that is not subtle, it works because of the veracity of the
testimony.
Jordan’s poem begins with an incantation, a recitation of many terms that
might be used to describe a Black woman, positive or derogatory. Here are
just a few lines of that sequence that takes up two full pages:

honeychile
sweetstuff
sugar
sweetheart
baby
Baby Baby

MOMMA MOMMA
Black Momma
Black bitch
Black pussy

The sound patterns of that incantation enable Jordan to lift her words to
the level of a spell. When Jordan invokes the figure of Black motherhood
at the poem’s close, the wizardry of the poem shakes us to the
foundations:

momma
help me
turn the face of history
to your face.

I’ve been using the metaphor of a court in discussing this method of
delivering a message partly because I want to close with Linda
McCarriston’s great poem, “To Judge Faolain, Dead Long Enough: A Summons.”
In this poem, the judge, who commands the forces of money, patriarchy,
and the law, sends the speaker’s mother back to the husband who brutalized
her. But the poet can summon other powers against those forces. Call them
the winds of righteousness. By describing the mother’s wounds and the
family’s terror, McCarriston conjures a moral tornado, magically stripping
away the judge’s power. The poet turns the tables and makes the judge the
accused.

His punishment matches his legal crime of ignoring the suffering of those
he’s entrusted to serve. As in Jordan’s “Getting Down to Get Over,” the
language has the diction and force of an incantation:

                                I call
your spirit home again, divesting you
of robe and bench…

The sentence that McCarriston proposes for the judge is no less than his
reincarnation as a powerless woman at the mercy of a sick and violent man,
so he may personally feel the abuse he ignored when he was in a position
of authority.

These two poets are skillful at calling on the force of righteousness to
make their points. They do this partly by the incredibly specific details
they use to describe moral wrong, and partly by the incantation of their
speech. This sort of voice is also familiar to those who follow U.S.
history. It’s the energy behind Soujourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman”
speech, and many of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most powerful public
utterances. It’s not a mode that a writer can call on every time, but for
particularly strong statements against injustice, I don’t think anything
is more effective.

Other recent posts about writing topics: 
How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1Part 2, Part 3Part 4 
How to Get Published: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4 
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8Part 9Part 10
Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7
Working with a Writing Mentor: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Why Write Poetry? Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4
Using Poetic Forms, Part 1: Introduction; Part 2: The Sonnet; Part 3, The Sestina;

Monday, March 4, 2013

AWP Boston 2013

AWP Boston 2013 promises to be the largest conference ever of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Below are links to several blogs about the conference:

AWP Boston 2013: What's New
Suggestions on How to Network at AWP
Highlights for Thursday, March 7, 2013
Highlights for Friday, March 8, 2013
Highlights for Saturday, March 9, 2013

Zack Rogow will be reading at an offsite event at AWP on Wednesday, March 6 at 7:00 p.m. as part of the launch of Cornelius Eady's new chapbook/CD in the community room of Cambridge Cohousing, 175 Richdale Avenue in Cambridge MA. He'll also be speaking on two panels at AWP on Friday, March 8: Things We Know We Love: The Poems and Influence of Nazim Hikmet, from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m., room 305, Level 3; and What Poets Learn When They Translate, from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m., room 204, level 2. He'll be signing copies of his latest book of poems, My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers, on Saturday, March 9, from noon to 1:15 at the Kattywompus Press table, booth 1111.


Other recent posts about writing topics: 
How to Get Published: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4 
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8Part 9Part 10
Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7
Working with a Writing Mentor: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Why Write Poetry? Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4
Using Poetic Forms, Part 1: Introduction; Part 2: The Sonnet; Part 3, The Sestina;
Part 4, The Ghazal; Part 5, The Tanka
How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 


AWP highlights for Saturday, March 9, 2013

Here are my very personal and individual picks for this day at the conference of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.

Room 103, Plaza Level
S106. P.U.P.: Poets in Unexpected Places. (Jon Sands, Samantha Thornhill, Adam Falkner, Syreeta McFadden, Elana Bell) I like what this organization is doing, bringing poetry to unlikely venues.

Room 108, Plaza Level
S110. Fifty Years Later: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction(Gabriel Brownstein, Joanna Smith Rakoff, Thomas Beller, Jess Row, Elisa Albert) This book had a huge influence on me when I was a budding writer, so I’m giving this a thumb’s up.

Room 204, Level 2
S117. Translating Slippery Dreamers: French Surrealist Poetry in the Hands of American Authors. (Marilyn Kallet, Mark Polizzotti, Nancy Kline, Bill Zavatsky, Darren Jackson) Good panel. I heart French surrealism.

10:30 to 11:45 a.m.

Room 302/304, Level 3
S148. Breaking the Jaws of Silence. (Sholeh Wolpe, Kim Addonizio, Tom Sleigh, Quincy Troupe, Yusef Komunyakaa) Great panel, important topic on the freedom to write for poets.

Noon to 1:15

Room 202, Level 2
S166. Bringing Poetry to the People. (Taylor Mali, Samantha Thornhill, Jon Sands, Roger Bonair-Agard, Michael Salinger) Important discussion on creative strategies for getting poetry out to a larger audience.

1:30 to 2:45 p.m.

Room 109, Plaza Level
S188. Found in Translation: Great Nonfiction. (S.L. Wisenberg, Faith Adiele, Patrick Madden, Susan Harris, Vijay Seshadri) International nonfiction—surprising topic, good writers to discover here.

Room 201, Level 2
S192. Wild Writing Residencies. (Marybeth Holleman, Nancy Lord, Diane Weddington, Gary Lawless, Mimi White) Surprising topic. Nancy Lord always says something worth hearing.

Room 203, Level 2
S194. Finding New Freedom in Old Forms. (Danielle Jones-Pruett, Jill McDonough, Maria Hummel, Tyehimba Jess) Interesting group to discuss this topic. I’m betting this will be good.

3:00 to 4:45 p.m.

Hynes Ballroom, Level 3
S208. POEMJAZZ, A Conversation and Performance with Robert Pinsky, Laurence Hobgood, and Stan Strickland. (Robert Pinsky, Laurence Hobgood, Stan Strickland, Ben Allison) A little known fact about Robert Pinsky is that he played jazz saxophone in a band when he was younger, so this could be good.

4:30 to 5:45 p.m.

Alice Hoffman Bookfair Stage, Exhibit Hall D, Level 2
BF40. CIIS & Mission at Tenth(Carolyn Cooke, Edie Meiday, Margaret Rhee, Brynn Saito, Pireeni Sundaralingam) Strong group of San Francisco Bay Area readers.

8:30 to 10:00 p.m.

S264. Academy of American Poets Presents Lucie Brock-Broido and Anne Carson. (Lucie Brock-Broido, Anne Carson, Jennifer Benka) A good reason to stay around Saturday night.

 AWP LINKS:

AWP Boston 2013: What's New
Suggestions on How to Network at AWP
Highlights for Thursday, March 7, 2013
Highlights for Friday, March 8, 2013

Zack Rogow will be reading at an offsite event at AWP on Wednesday, March 6 at 7:00 p.m. as part of the launch of Cornelius Eady's new chapbook/CD in the community room of Cambridge Cohousing, 175 Richdale Avenue in Cambridge MA. He'll also be speaking on two panels at AWP on Friday, March 8: Things We Know We Love: The Poems and Influence of Nazim Hikmet, from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m., room 305, Level 3; and  What Poets Learn When They Translate, from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m., room 204, level 2. He'll be signing copies of his latest book of poems, My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers, on Saturday, March 9, from noon to 1:15 at the Kattywompus Press table, booth 1111.


Other recent posts about writing topics: 
How to Get Published: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4 
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8Part 9Part 10
Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7
Working with a Writing Mentor: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Why Write Poetry? Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4
Using Poetic Forms, Part 1: Introduction; Part 2: The Sonnet; Part 3, The Sestina;
Part 4, The Ghazal; Part 5, The Tanka
How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 

AWP highlights for Friday, March 8, 2013

Here are my very personal and individual picks for this day at the conference of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

Room 108, Plaza Level
F138. Role and Impact of International Anthologies. (Kaveh Bassiri, Kevin Prufer, Nathalie Handal, Geoffrey Brock, Pierre Joris) I’m interested in international literature, and this panel features important anthologists.

Room 200, Level 2
F142. Essaying the Essay(David Lazar, Phillip Lopate, David Shields, Lia Purpura, Reda Bensmaïa) Good panel, good readers, good topic.

Room 201, Level 2
F143. Books in the Age of Reader-centric Publishing. (Buzz Poole, Lisa Pearson, Richard Nash, Matvei Yankelevich, Elizabeth Koch) This topic is the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about—what’s happening to literary publishing in the age of the ebook.

Room 302/304, Level 3
F152. Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series Showcases Boston Writers. (Peg Alford Pursell, Christopher Castellani, Tracy Winn, Pablo Medina, Joan Wickersham) This is a wonderful San Francisco Bay Area series, transported to Boston by its able curator, Peg Alford Pursell. The theme is that each reader only reads for seven minutes, which psychologists claim is the time of a listener’s maximum attention to one voice.

Room 305, Level 3
F154. Things We Know We Love: The Poems and Influence of Nâzim Hikmet. (Randy Blasing, Mutlu Konuk Blasing, David Wojahn, Dorianne Laux, Zack Rogow, Sidney Wade) Nazim Hikmet is one of the great poets of the last century, and this is an important moment to make his poetry known to the wider audience it deserves.

Room 306, Level 3
F155. Page Meets Stage. (Taylor Mali, Martín Espada, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Reginald Gibson) More good readers from this renowned series based in Manhattan.

12:30 to 1:20 p.m.
Book signing with Eva Saulitis at the Red Hen Press booth. Eva Saulitis published both a book of poems, Many Ways to Say It; and a book of nonfiction about her work as a whale biologist, Into Great Silence, all in the last few months. She will also be signing Saturday at Red Hen from 11:30 to 12:30.

Noon to 1:15 p.m.

Room 202, Level 2
F173. How to Build a Successful Kickstarter Campaign for Your Publishing Project. (Meaghan O’Connell, Benjamin Samuel, Mat Honan, Joshua Mandelbaum, Laurie Ochoa) Useful! Useful is good.

Room 210, Level 2
F180. The Urge Toward Memoir. (Elisabeth Schmitz, Jill Kneerim, Michael Thomas, Jeanette Winterson, Lily King) Good group of panelists, interesting topic—novelists writing memoirs.

Room 303, Level 3
F182. How to Catch a Pair of Flying Hands: A Reading by Deaf Writers. (Raymond Luczak, Kristen Harmon, Allison Polk, Kristen Ringman) A worthwhile topic I’ve never seen before at AWP. Good title, too.

1:30 to 2:45 p.m.

Room 204, Level 2
F204. What Poets Learn When They Translate. (Zack Rogow, Idra Novey, Chana Bloch, Bill Zavatsky) Shameless self-promotion.

Room 302/304, Level 3
F210. A Centenary Celebration of Muriel Rukeyser, Sponsored by Paris Press. (Jan Freeman, Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Olga Broumas, Michael S. Harper) Who scheduled my panel at the same time as this event? Muriel Rukeyser, well worth honoring.

Hynes Ballroom, Level 3
F220. Cave Canem Prize Winners, Then and Now. (Alison Meyers, Major Jackson, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Tracy K. Smith, Iain Haley Pollock) Cave Canem is such a wonderful literary institution, this has to be good.

Room 107, Plaza Level
F226. A Tribute To Remy Charlip, 1929-2012. (Joshua Kryah, Erika Bradfield, Brian Selznick, Dan Hurlin) My son spent weeks when he would not go to sleep until I read him Remy Charlip’s Mother, Mother, I Feel Sick: Send for the Doctor, Quick, Quick, Quick. Remy was a terrific children’s writer and a terrific person.

4:30 to 5:45 p.m.

Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Level 2
F250. Alison Bechdel & Jeanette Winterson: A Reading and Conversation, Sponsored by Emerson College MFA. (Alison Bechdel, Jeanette Winterson, Elisabeth Schmitz) Jeanette Winterson, live, in person!

Room 202, Level 2
F263. Blue-collar College Students and the Creative Writing Degree. (Jerry Wemple, Lawrence Coates, Claire Lawrence) Class is a topic so rarely broached in discussions of creative writing programs.

7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Offsite event: Hanging Loose Press authors reading. Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St., across from Copley Square Park. Great group of Hanging Loose readers featuring Robert Hershon and Bill Zavatsky, among others. Hanging Loose is one of my favorites of the small presses, and has some of the funniest and most moving authors.

8:30 to 10:00 p.m.

Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Level 2
F284. Amy Bloom & Richard Russo: A Reading and Conversation. (Leah Hager Cohen, Amy Bloom, Richard Russo) I’m a fan of Amy Bloom and I’ve never heard her read in person, so this is high on my list.

AWP LINKS:

AWP Boston 2013: What's New
Suggestions on How to Network at AWP
Highlights for Thursday, March 7, 2013
Highlights for Saturday, March 9, 2013

Zack Rogow will be reading at an offsite event at AWP on Wednesday, March 6 at 7:00 p.m. as part of the launch of Cornelius Eady's new chapbook/CD in the community room of Cambridge Cohousing, 175 Richdale Avenue in Cambridge MA. He'll also be speaking on two panels at AWP on Friday, March 8: Things We Know We Love: The Poems and Influence of Nazim Hikmet, from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m., room 305, Level 3; and  What Poets Learn When They Translate, from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m., room 204, level 2. He'll be signing copies of his latest book of poems, My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers, on Saturday, March 9, from noon to 1:15 at the Kattywompus Press table, booth 1111.


Other recent posts about writing topics: 
How to Get Published: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4 
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8Part 9Part 10
Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7
Working with a Writing Mentor: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?: Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5
Why Write Poetry? Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4
Using Poetic Forms, Part 1: Introduction; Part 2: The Sonnet; Part 3, The Sestina;
Part 4, The Ghazal; Part 5, The Tanka
How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4