Let's see if I can link to a bit more West Chester news this morning:

West Chester University Poetry Conference broadens its scope

Many thanks, Maryann.

The computer lab upstairs at Sykes is great for live blogging. Cathy, have they air conditioned the dorms? We melted there fifteen years ago and stayed at the Holiday Inn forever after.

Press Release


Today at the West Chester Poetry Conference

2011 FIRST BOOK SALON DES REFUSÉS!

http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/...erbe-thumb.jpg

Titles and authors on this year’s panel include

Le Dejeuner sur l’Aigrir des Raisin by Edward Cash

Lyric in White, No. 1 by James “Toots” McNeill

and

Here Comes the Sun by Claude Moon

This year's moderator: Emily Sola

In the grassy lot across the street at 3:00 pm, Thursday, June 9.
(BYOB)
__

Buried lede: Refusés congratulate all on site!

Yes, Tim, I'm using the Sykes computers. Actually, the dorms are relatively new buildings. I'm in an air-conditioned suite on the 7th floor with my own room and bath with a common sitting room with one other student. Very nice and cool, because outside it's hot and humid. On my way now to my master class with Alicia Stallings. Will report back tomorrow.

Cheers,
Cathy

Cathy,

Thanks so much for such a thorough report.

Excellent send-up, Rick! You're not the first to be gratuitously snubbed. For what it's worth, I went to bat for you, and as far as I'm concerned, they blew it by not including Huncke. And they can't plead ignorance. Not this time.

It isn't as if, this time around, I'd say that any of the books included didn't deserve inclusion. It's more that the conference, to capture what it is supposed to capture, needs to open the hell up. Badly. I cannot think of a volume of the scope and ambition of Huncke that has come across the First Books Panel since I've been paying attention. While I applaud Bridgford's efforts to "diversify" with regard to style and demographics, surely some of the process has to be not blowing off rising writers doing excellent work who come from outside rather narrow constituencies. I tried to tell Bridgford about Huncke, to no avail. If she misses another one this big, it'll be Very Bad.

Good to hear the goings-on, Cathy. I’m looking forward to reading more. Thanks for sharing it all.

Quincy and Rick, would you explain, to someone who doesn’t get the joke, what the scoop is with Rick’s book and West Chester. I think I get Rick’s allusion to the Paris Salon and the snubbing of artists there. And I do know that Huncke is distinguished work and easily deserves to be on a first books panel at such a place at West Chester. Are you saying that it was left out because of insider politics? Really, I’m asking this naively, as one who never gets how this stuff works. I want to understand it better. Thanks.

That's what I'm saying, at least, Andrew. Rick was not on the initial invite list (though I know Seven Towers informed the WCU Poetry Center of the book's existence). I made an appeal to a list of WC faculty and panel and seminar leaders, as well as to Kim Bridgford herself, arguing for the inclusion of Huncke. (Sure, I was excluded when Across the Grid of Streets came out, but look, someone had to make the appeal.) In fairness, the bulk of those I contacted responded graciously... and said (I assume accurately) that they had no role in the First Books Panel selection could do nothing. But Bridgford never so much as acknowledged receipt, and Rick was not invited. Some of us apparently don't merit a response (though my immediate boss at the Raintown is running the Women's Timeline and a panel, though I co-curate the regular reading series that gave Kim Bridgford a paying New York reading last fall, etc.).

It was hurtful when it was my turn, but it's hard to be objective about one's own work. In Rick's case, it is a genuinely exceptional book, and that lot just can't be bothered. And I'm saying this as nicely as I can.

Thanks, Quincy. Getting snubbed sucks, no doubt about it. And there is always plenty of it to go around. I've found that the rub of it is often the fact that there is no way of really knowing what in the world is going on behind the scenes. When someone doesn't respond, in other words, sometimes it's a snub sometimes it's not, and the person left hanging has no way to find out which it is. In po-biz it's especially tough because what we do gets so little acknowledgment anyway, even though it is really and truly hard work. So I sympathize with your and Rick's frustration/irritation about the whole thing.