[Maryann Corbett]

Thank you, Bill! Great report.

Can we persuade anybody else to give us the blow-by-blow of the talks and panels you went to?

[Lance Levens]

Bravo, Bill. Engaging report. Anybody like to tell us about Robert Pinsky?

[Julie Steiner]

Blow-by-blow coverage...yeah, Maryann, I'm still waiting to hear about the fistfights, too.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Any mud-wrestling?

Nemo

[Gail White]

Originally Posted by Catherine Chandler

Each speaker read a poem of his-her own, as well as a poem by another poet published in Able Muse over the years, such as a poem by Alan Sullivan and Rose Kelleher.
Cathy

It was reported to me that Julie Kane read a sonnet of mine, for which
I will gladly donate blood whenever she needs it.

[Allen Tice]

Meeting and greeting. Well! Also teasing. Pointedly accurate comments on prosody (a real live set of mysterious spondees, oh my) and equally productive words from Deep Thought on rhymes, metrix, and other poems to get into. Lots of worthy activities, but I think in some respects the high points of the conference were when Richard Wilbur was on tap. He read well and clearly. His birthday celebration was a song in itself. Quite an intellect, going well at 90.

Somehow in the impetuous twice or thrice daily in-and-out of my dorm room, I let a spare unworn piece of summer clothing fall behind an unoccupied bed in my room, and didn't think to look there when packing up to go. So now I can say, alas, I left my pants in Pennsylvania.

[Michael Cantor]

Leaving your pants in Pennsylvania is a bad slant, Allen. You should have left a pen behind. And consider yourself fortunate that you weren't in Baltimore.

[Allen Tice]

Were I in Baltimore every time I leave my pants behind an unoccupied bed that has only a striped mattress on it (apart from my suitcase on wheels), I would leave them each time behind a SIGABA machine for dramatic effect. There's one on display at the NSA museum near the airport. Way cute, but you need to call to set up an appointment. Why SIGABA? According to the biographer that we heard before one of Wilbur's appearances, the SIGABA is that beaut which he operated as near as was safe to German fire in Italy. Here's a link: SIGABA.

They also have a bunch of other stuff from Venona, etc, and some of that is still under consideration I gather from what I read here and there. Not everything on Wikipedia is cut and dried.

Still, pants it was. And Richard Wilbur it was. (I'm not yet cleared to talk about a certain fright wig I saw slithering across ancient seas. Was it Eliot's?)

PS, while I'm on Eliot, I don't think I've ever heard that anyone caught the probable mandrill image in stanza one of his "Sweeney Among the Nightingales". I think it's pretty clear (though Eliot makes it a jaw, not a nose). Mandrill. Here's the relevant verse :

APENECK SWEENEY spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.

It's all about Lucy before she met Desi.

But that's not West Chester.

[Alex Pepple]

Sorry, I haven’t been participating in these discussions due to too many distractions (but what’s new!).

I’m glad there are already good accounts of events from Cathy and Bill. It was wonderful meeting them in there person. And there was a long list of other Eratosphereans I met at West Chester beside Cathy and Bill, including Micheal Cantor (he’s very charming, I’ll have you know), Peter Coghill (what a tall guy!), Allen Tice, David Landrum, John (J.D.) Smith, Jennifer Reeser, Nicholas Friedman, Gregory Dowling, Susan McLean, Ned Balbo, Anna Evans, Sam Gwynn, David Mason (who read some wonderful new lyric poems instead of his usual narrative poetry), April Lindner (presented by Dana Gioia just before one of the faculty readings, who in turn presented her latest book in the western writers criticism series on Marilyn Nelson . . . and April’s poem from the Able Muse Anthology, “Our Lady of Perpetual Help”, will appear Monday, June 20 in the American Life in Poetry columns). And there are quite a few others, including the Able Muse Anthology panel members already mentioned in other posts.

Of course, I met several distinguished/occasional Eratosphereans such as Len Krisak, Timothy Steele, Rhina P. Espaillat, our last Distinguished Guest Bruce Bennett – who couldn’t thank me and the Sphere enough for inviting him . . . he wanted to personally thank the person who’d suggested him initially. I said everyone, given that he’s well known for French repeating forms. And then I found out that Michael Cantor was the chief suspect, so I pointed him that way. Indeed, I even met Eratosphere lurkers some of you may not be aware of, such as Annabelle Moseley, Susan de Sola (who came all the way from the Netherlands!).

On the first day, I caught the tail end of the Hip Hop workshop with Kim Bridgford, and arrived there just in time to hear Rhina read a really good hip-hoppy poem composed during that workshop, with a clever use the device of repetition. Then later, it was the First Book Panel event with reading by Cathy Chandler, the late Margaret Griffiths (Maz) represented by Michael Cantor, Eratospherean Andrew Sofer, and Brett Foster). Cathy did a great job reading some favorites from her book, Lines of Flight, and even read that one selection we had to remove from the book after it won the Nemerov Sonnet Award! Michael did Maz proud, reading mostly poems that were in a male voice, and occasionally played a recording of Ann Drysdale reading some not-to-be-missed favorites written in a female voice.

Since I’d arrived way early in order to support Cathy’s and Michael’s reading, I had to find something to occupy me between the first and the last day when the Able Muse Anthology panel was scheduled, so I decided to enroll in a workshop. I went for the element of surprise with Micheal O’Siadhail (Sources of Form workshop) whom I’d never heard of before the conference. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Besides the rest of his other impressive achievements, he’s an amazing linguist and speaks and translates from several languages such as Irish, Icelandic, German, French, Hungarian, Norwegian, etc. I have a very good idea of who I’ll need to coopt as Distinguished Guest for our next Translation bake-off! By the way, I found out that the pronunciation of his name is totally disconnected from the spelling – no, it’s not Michael, etc, but something that sounds like Mee-hall O'sh-eel. It was a good coincidence that David Landrum was in the same workshop, along with John Milbury-Steen whom I'd published the Reload, Workshops and Tribute issues of Able Muse.

I attended pretty much all the panels and readings, and the parties. Some of the memorable ones were the small press panel chaired by Anna Evans which garnered a lot of interest and questions from the participants, especially on the issue of paper versus online. Anna mentioned that it moved in a different direction than the one she had planned. On the Mezzo Cammin Panel, besides the discussion of all the accomplishments of the journal which include the largest database of women poets, there was the extremely hilarious highlight of Julie Kane’s her poem on redheads. Of course, the Richard Wilbur tribute panel and the party afterward were tremendous events. As for the most notable party in terms of unusual excitement, the pool party wins hands down with a concluding segment that can be best described as a case of staff gone wild!

There are already some good reports on the Able Muse Panel. I want to commend Leslie Monsour who took it upon herself to sell Kim Bridgford on the idea, then enlisted the panel members, and planned essentially everything. Leslie described how she discovered Able Muse, along with Kevin Durkin and Timothy Steele, and was eventually published there as the featured poet in the Millennial issue. Julie Kane presentation was well-prepared, and humorous, complete with accounts of the early days of Able Muse. It was impressive how much of it she recalled, including events around her first acceptance. Alicia Stallings also described her first encounter with Eratosphere and Able Muse, and how she eventually jumped in and served as one of our earlier moderators. Kevin Durkin started with how he first came in contact with Able Muse after being discouraged by the apparent lack of a metrical poetry scene back then in the Los Angeles area. Then he entered the keywords ‘metrical poetry’ into Google, and there was the Premiere issue of Able Muse. By persisting for several months despite my insistence that it’s best suited to the major poets and writers achieving frequent publication, he and Leslie wore down my resistance to being interviewed. Thus, Kevin ended up by interviewing me on Able Muse, Eratosphere, Able Muse Press – online and paper formats – the beginning days, the future, and everything in-between.

And this looks like a good place to stop since I suspect that I’ve been typing for far too long, and have most likely bored more than a handful of readers who have tuned out a long time ago . . . but not before slipping in that the latest issue of Able Muse (Number 11, Summer 2011) should be available by tomorrow or so in Kindle electronic format on Amazon (and on other e-readers such as the Barnes and Nobles Nook, iPad, etc). And so, the jump by Able Muse Press onto the handheld digital reader bandwagon – ostensibly the book format of the future – begins!

[Janice D. Soderling]

Not boring, not for a minute. More, more.