On Minneapolis and AWP in NYC

A belated thank you, Minneapolis and the wonderful crowd who came to hear Sun Yung Shin, Bryan Thao Worra, and me. I thought the readings by Bryan Thao Worra and the incomparable Sun Yung Shin were excellent, and it was great to meet Bao Phi, Ed Bok Lee, Shannon Gibney, Kim Park Nelson and Anne at dinner, great to see good Korean adoptee friends and poet friends, including Lyle Daggett, who has blogged about the reading. A special thank you to Bryan, who organized the reading and shuttled me around the beautiful city. He has posted a slideshow of the event here. I'll remember the Loft reading with great affection.

It was my good luck to be part of another great reading just days later in NYC, before the zoo that is AWP. A highlight of my time in New York was reading with Sun Yung Shin and Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, along with visual artist Jane Jin Kaisen at Silk Road Mocha. If there are two books I could recommend, it would be theirs. I can't thank the folks there enough---but to everyone at AKA-NY: Hollee, Mee Hyun, Ann, Susan, Jared, Marissa, Tom---thank you very much for everything. That our work is taking root means a great deal. You are instrumental in this.

And then, AWP. Whew. What a good blur. Old friends, new friends, the online poets and editors I finally got to meet in person, the luminaries. Went to a couple of good panels, saw some great readings. Enjoyed the bookfair. Bummed that I didn't get to meet a few folks I had hoped to. Loved meeting so many bloggers. Bought many books. One highlight was meeting the poets at the APA reading at NYU---Joseph, Aimee, Patrick, Evelina, Jon, Kazim, Oliver, Purvi, Marlon, David, Sarah, Neil. Finally met Craig. And Susan, Emmy, Suzanne, and Shin Yu. Timothy, Rigoberto, Eduardo, Reb, and Rebecca. And Reginald and Yusef. Suzanne, Jennifer. Nice to meet Matt from the Fishouse, for whom I had recorded right before the conference. Great talks with Malcolm. Brian, Gillian, Tim, Steven, Sun Yung. The NYPL. Too many more nice conversations to list. Poetry everywhere. Bodies moving quickly.

Last night, I watched the Giants' historic effort and then the city went wild.

Today on the long flight back to California, I read three books of poems and wrote.