Low high; hi!

It's been cool and cloudy today and, honestly, really lovely. I don't think the temperature even hit 70 degrees all day. In Indianapolis, the record "low high temperature" was set over 100 years ago at 75, and they probably broke that record today. I know climate change is probably to blame for this, but I confess I've been enjoying it immensely.

I've returned safe & sound from the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago (attendance, including registrants and exhibitors, totaled 28,941 - this conference could eat AWP for lunch and still be hungry!). While an unfortunate amount of my time was eaten up on the shuttle buses between my hotel and McCormick Place, I attended some interesting sessions, met a few people, saw some cool stuff in the exhibits, and picked up some great freebies - notably the free frothy coffee drinks from ProQuest (I hit that line three or four times) and a free copy of Rachel Zucker's forthcoming book, Museum of Accidents (out from Wave in, I think, October). I got to hear Zucker read, which was great fun, and chatted with her for a minute at her book-signing; I also got to hear Jane Hirshfield (but didn't go to her book-signing because it conflicted with Rachel Zucker's reading - I already have Hirshfield's newest book anyway) and Sherman Alexie (didn't go to his signing either, as the line was about 980300198 people long - librarians love them some Sherman Alexie! - but did snag a copy of the bound excerpt from his forthcoming book that they were handing out). Other very popular book-signers included Judy Blume (who I gawked at for a minute) and Neil Gaiman.

Besides that, and besides getting together with Sara for a bite and some drinks & good conversation on Friday evening (yay!), the conference pretty much took me entirely out of poetry-brain for a full week. I'd taken my new manuscript with me, knowing I'd have the option of at least one or two quiet evenings in my hotel room and thinking I'd take advantage of the marauding-cat-free space to spread out pages all over the floor & juggle them a bit, but I found I didn't even have the -- what, ability? willingness? mental sharpness? -- to read poems, much less write them or fiddle with them.

It was a relatively interesting conference, & gave me some good food for thought especially regarding some of the technology trends that are going to affect how libraries serve their users (I really, really want to play with Google Wave now), & helped me get a little clearer understanding of how what I do on a day-to-day basis fits into the larger world of library work. So, that's good. All in all, I have to say AWP is way more fun. But ALA was worth my time. And I had an incredible view from my hotel room; I stayed at the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza, up on the 19th floor of the Merchandise Mart, & to the west I had a clear view all the way to the broad sweep of the horizon, directly below/before me was the Chicago River, and to the east & north I could see much of the Chicago skyline, including the John Hancock bldg., with glimpses of Lake Michigan in between skyscrapers. Evenings were spectacular, watching the big fat orange sun sinking below the horizon & watching all the lights slowly twinkling on. The daytime view was gray and kinda bleak (I'm not a fan of cities; give me a view with grass & trees any day) but at night it was spectacular & dazzling; I kept my curtains open all night just to look out at it all.

Next up - two Springsteen shows in Mansfield, MA in August, and a Rosanne Cash show (for which I have front row seats!) in September at Notre Dame. And I'm plotting: we just got 25 new Springsteen tourdates, so I'm trying to figure out how many (& which ones) I can afford to go to. St. Louis is almost for sure, and I'm considering Chicago & Cleveland as well. Sorely tempted by Nashville, which was a fantastic show & venue last year, but the date is horribly inconvenient for me; also by Kansas City, which is the night after St. Louis so it would be a lovely "double shot" but the drive back is long. And I only have so much money - not that much, especially now that we've received the official word that the university isn't giving out any raises this year (not cost-of-living, not merit, not anything - no, it's not a surprise; yes, I'm glad that I have a job at all, and one I generally like, to boot - but it does look like I'm going to be driving the '91 Corolla for at least another year).

Sure, I'm crazy for chasing a rock band around the country like this when I don't exactly have the kind of disposable income to justify such a thing. But every show I go to, I come away feeling energized, rejuvenated, glad to be alive. I come away feeling at least ten, maybe twenty years younger. I come away with all kinds of energy for my own creative work. I come away in love with rock & roll again and with the world. And that's worth every penny & every mile.

Checking in quick

Hope everyone in the U.S. had a good Fourth of July holiday. It rained here allllllll day on the Fourth. I think I started growing moss.

Just wanted to post a quick check-in as I won't be around much for the next week or so. I'll be headed to Chicago for the big American Library Assn. annual conference, a humongous event which takes over the McCormick Place convention center as well as several of the big downtown hotels. While I'll be doing library-ish stuff most of the time, I do hope to steal away for an hour or so each day to catch some of the readings that will be going on. Not the plethora (I've always thought "plethora" sounded like some kind of a prehistoric fish...) of readings you get at AWP, but still, there are some good ones including Jane Hirshfield, Rachel Zucker, Janice Harrington, and Sherman Alexie.

I've touched bases with at least a couple of Chicagoans, but if you're going to be at ALA or in the area, drop me a note! My conference schedule is looking relatively nuts, which is par for the course, but I'm hoping to escape the ALA-mania for at least one evening. I don't think it will be quite as much of a social whirl as AWP, but hopefully it will be fun.

Speaking of AWP, I didn't get the grant that I applied for, so chances are I won't be going to Denver next year. Oh well. I'm still looking around for funding possibilities, so maybe something will turn up -- but as great a time as I had in Chicago, I can't do another one on my own nickel. Maybe in 2011 (D.C.) though more likely not until 2012 (Chicago again) -- heck, by then I may have finally finished reading all the books I picked up this year, huh? :)

shamelessly self-promotional

The podcast of my "appearance" (does one actually appear on the radio, I wonder?) on "The Poets Weave" is now up. Download it on the Poets Weave podcast page. It's a five-minute show, and includes 3 poems: two from Breach and one newer poem -- "First Earthquake," my elegy for E Street Band organist/accordionist Danny Federici, who died this past April.

I'll stick a link over in the right-hand side of my blog pretty soon, too.

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Speaking of Breach, poet Collin Kelley said some darn nice things about it over on his blog! Seriously, I got all blush-y when I read it, and I wasn't even having a hot flash. :) Also, I totally want to steal his phrase "harbingers and incidents."

I was sort of getting used to the fact that a few people had actually bought my chapbook, but for some reason it still surprises me just a little bit (in a good way!) when I find out somebody actually read the thing, much less that they actually liked it. Hee!

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Looking over the AWP schedule... plenty of good stuff, but for the most part it looks like I won't be too overwhelmed in each time slot by fifteen different things I am just dying to attend. I probably overlooked a few, though. I will be there for sure, barring anything unforeseen like ice storms or plague of locusts.

I'm sort of wondering whether any other poet-bloggers want to throw together an informal late-night guerrilla reading? Poet-bloggers and friends? Round-robin format, so if there are a bunch of us you might only get to read a couple of poems but at least everyone will get to read something? Heck, if only a few folks are interested, I'll even host it in my room at the Hilton -- I probably wouldn't feel the need to boot y'all out until 2 a.m. or so. Bring a bottle of wine! :) I'm sure there will be larger and better spaces we could commandeer, as well. I'm sure I will say this again as we get closer to February, but if anyone does want to get together for a guerrilla reading -- or for a cup of coffee or a beer, or what-have-you -- drop me an email and we'll figure out how to coordinate things.

Yes, I am totally paranoid about AWP; I've never been before, and I have this fear that if I don't plan some stuff out ahead of time, I will end up drifting around the place aimlessly and never meeting anybody. Never mind that it's a conference full of poets and so there's no way in heck I will be the only shy, socially-backwards person there! *grin*

Looks like I will be attending the ALA conference for the first time next year as well (that's the American Library Association), which is also in Chicago. 2009: The Year Of Conferences. Hoo boy.