AWP Highlights and Lessons on Evil

Christ what good times we had at AWP Chicago. For all you who missed it, we really slit those good times right up the belly; we danced on their entrails without even the slightest wink of remorse. We shed sangria-laced tears at poetry readings, ate Thai food as Marilynne Robinson spoke about evil, gave homeless men peanut-butter sandwiches, rode the el train through rooftops at sunset. We stuffed our chests with the sort of unconscious un-loneliness only known to big-city dwellers.

And maybe we learned some stuff too. Maybe we had some hard realizations about good and evil—epiphanies even. Maybe when Lee Martin read the scene of his first kiss, and extended that scene to include the awkward boner that resulted, we were reminded that those Hollywood-love-conquers-all scenes are bullshit. Maybe in every panel we attended, panelists expressed the need to explore the evil, the hidden, the uncanny. They encouraged us to uncover the sides of ourselves that we would rather keep covered—sides that (in Stephen Elliot’s words) we didn’t know we had.

Probably it was just me. My persistent unwillingness to relinquish idealistic views of just about everything makes me astute to such remarks. Remarks like “Writing is in NO WAY a noble calling,” (Stephen Elliot again—he really rocked me) and Ha Jin agreeing with Auden that “Poetry makes nothing happen.” They’re trying to help chip away at this tower of self-importance I have erected, but geeze it ain’t easy.

The point is: shit’s complicated. I’m in the process of overcoming my urge to ignore its complexity, so you should know that I left some things out in the above description of times had at AWP Chicago. You should know that I declined all eighteen of my mother’s phone calls; was disgusted at the sight of a filthy, oil-covered pigeon; thought almost exclusively about sex during at least one of the panels; saw a good friend more upset than she felt comfortable showing me; drove through my hometown in Missouri, a heap of emotional wreckage, and just felt irritated. I even stole a scarf someone left in the hotel lobby on the first day.

So there you have it, a larger slice of the AWP pie. We’ll spare you all the gritty details in the highlights below, but I would like to second the motion to clamp your jaw and go to the places you feel most uncomfortable—participate in the fucked-upness that is human experience.

ENOUGH OF MY BANTER NOW FOR THE MAIN ATTRACTION: 

AWP HIGHLIGHTS

Justin Bigos

• Erin Stalcup's kick-ass panel on "surprise" in fiction.
• Landon Godfrey's skull-and-crossbones scarf.
• iO/Catch Up/Lana Turner reading at the Chicago Public Library.
• Michael Martone's hair.
• The three or four young men who weren't trying to look like James Franco as Allen Ginsberg.

Nate Logan

• Deep dish pizza delivered to the hotel room
• Having lunch with poet-from-another-mother Brooklyn Copeland and her bf (my gf was there too <3)
• "Are there any horses in the crowd? / Neigh! / This poem is for you."
• The mummies and the Mongol diplomatic passport at the Field Museum
• Photobooth at Quimby's in the rain

Shannon Abbot

On the business of selling out everyone you know in CNF:

• Stephen Elliott: To write about a negative experience with someone, you have to actually forgive them first.
• Krista Bremer: Truth is one half of the equation. Compassion is the other. Remain as humble as you can about your recollections.
• Lee Martin: To be truthful about other people, you have to tell the truth about yourself.

Tim Boswell

• Seth Harwood saying the idea that publishers will not want your work if it’s already appeared as an e-book or podcast is a myth. Better to get your work out there and show it can generate interest!
• Stepping onto the skydeck at Willis Tower with only a glass floor between me and a 103-story plunge to my death. Terrifying.
• From a DIY publicity panel: Send a copy of your book to your most-admired writer. Send one to the president. Be audacious.
• Chicago deep-dish pizza. Lou Malnati, you have spoiled me for all other pizza.

Hillary Stringer

• From "Men from Venus, Women from Mars: Writing from the Perspective of the Opposite Sex," with Kyle Minor, Kevin Wilson, Reese Okyong Kwon, Alan Heathcock, and Jennine Capo Crucet: Society often does not allow male characters to directly address their feelings; instead, these male characters must perform actions that convey these repressed emotions to the reader.
• Creepy "art" videos in the elevator continue to ominously say/flash "FIN."

• From the panel "Finding Home-Immigrant Voices in American Literature," with Aleksander Hemon, Nami Mun, and Stuart Dybek: The readers of the past lived in a world of "in-betweeness," while the ideal reader of the future lives in a world of "overlapping belonging." It is increasingly difficult to argue that we live in a monoculture. Observing the "melting pot" of America enacted on another culture (in Dybek's case, the change of his Pilsen neighborhood from Polish to Mexican) can help a writer highlight aspects of their own culture before these traits are assimilated.
• "Lobsters" at the South Loop Cafe.
• From a panel on "Writing Class, Representing Socio-Economic Realities in Your Work," with Courtney Tenz, Josh Weil, Ru Freeman, Sabra Wineteer, and Sterling Holywhitemountain: Class in America is ignored, while in international fiction, class is an inescapable reality. Are we intellectually curious enough to address class in America? Do we instead confuse "class" markers, such as eating watermelon, with "racial" markers, and how can we represent a variety of experiences? Does the majority of American fiction only address the realities of the upper-middle class?
• From a panel on "Literature and Evil," with Ha Jin, Paul Harding, and Marylinne Robinson: Sentimentality denies both good and evil, while complexity is what enables writing to control the perception of evil and explore it.
• The mystery of the overpuss....lives on.

Laura Miller

• Beyond the Pulp: Genre & Literary Fiction: Kevin Brockmeier’s words: "Viewing things at a tilt produces an exactness of vision," and his list of Top 50 Works of Fantasy and Sci-Fi.
• Discovering the journal Unstuck.
• Free sangria at the McSweeney's reading, and the heartbreaking genius of poet Rebecca Lindenberg.
• Paper Weight exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago
• Poetics of the Essay Panel: The metaphor: Writing nonfiction is like bees gathering pollen to make honey.