Thanks for the advice and feedback, everyone.

Hey, I have two new readings to announce. I'll probably start putting these in the sidebar instead of (or in addition to) on the Publications page.

Tuesday, April 7, 7:30 PM: Poems, Prose and Pints at Dressel's Public House at 419 N. Euclid Ave. in St. Louis.
Tuesday, April 28, 7:30 PM: Poetry at the Focal Point (St. Louis Poetry Center) at 2720 Sutton in St. Louis.

Little of my early reading in poetry was done in book form, so I wouldn't be able to do a good job of the "20 Books That Made You Fall in Love with Poetry" theme. However, I can give you "20 Poems That Made Me Fall in Love with Poetry." These are all early poems that got me into poetry rather than loves I've discovered more recently.

1. "Ozymandias" by Percy Shelley
2. "The Most of It" by Robert Frost
3. "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" by James Wright
4. "Ground Swell" by Mark Jarman
5. "Musee des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden
6. "On a Seven-Day Diary" by Alan Dugan
7. "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop
8. "The Jaguar" by Ted Hughes
9. "i sing of Olaf glad and big" by E. E. Cummings
10. "This Be the Verse" by Philip Larkin
11. "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen
12. "Behaving Like a Jew" by Gerald Stern
13. "The Beach" by Weldon Kees
14. "Evolution" by Sherman Alexie
15. "The Panther" by Rainer Maria Rilke
16. "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden
17. "How to Listen" by Major Jackson
18. "Sunday" by Timothy Liu
19. "Olduvai Gorge Thorn Tree" by Sarah Lindsay
20. "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" by Wallace Stevens

The new Anti- featured poet is John Gallaher. See poems contained in the new book Map of the Folded World from the University of Akron Press, including the title poem! All mentions of John Gallaher must also mention John Ashbery!

In the interest of getting past all this AWP crap, I'm just going to list a few iconic musicians/bands that I listen to enough to have a reasonably well informed favorite song, and I'm just going to name that favorite song. No seconds here. I've only sung one of these at karaoke, and I'm not telling which.

The Beatles - "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"
Johnny Cash - "Folsom Prison Blues"
Bob Dylan - "It Ain't Me Babe"
Led Zeppelin - "Over the Hills and Far Away"
Nirvana - "Territorial Pissings"
Pearl Jam - "Rearviewmirror"
Tom Petty - "Wildflowers"
Public Enemy - "Rebel Without a Pause"
REM - "Electrolite"
The Rolling Stones - "Paint It Black"
Bruce Springsteen - "Atlantic City"
U2 - "Wire"
Neil Young - "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"

What are yours? What other icons?

Here are the books and journals I acquired at AWP.

Books:
And So, Joel Brouwer
Night with Drive-By Shooting Stars, Jim Daniels
The Last Predicta, Chad Davidson
My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again, Daisy Fried
Map of the Folded World, John Gallaher
A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow, Noah Eli Gordon
American Fractal, Timothy Green
This Clumsy Living, Bob Hicok
The Mending Worm, Joan Houlihan
The Good Thief, Marie Howe
Epistles, Mark Jarman
MacNolia, A. Van Jordan
Freezing, Steve Langan
Abrupt Rural, David Dodd Lee
Your Ten Favorite Words, Reb Livingston
Lark Apprentice, Louise Mathias
Horse Dance Underwater, Helena Mesa
The Book of Props, Wayne Miller
Only the Senses Sleep, Wayne Miller
At the Drive-In Volcano, Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Year of the Snake, Lee Ann Roripaugh
Ohio Violence, Alison Stine
Subject to Change, Matthew Thorburn
The Wind-Up Gods, Stefi Weisburd

Chapbooks/Other:
A Poetry Criticism Reader, Eds. Jerry Harp & Jan Weissmiller
What Apocalypse?, Mark McKee
They All Seemed Asleep, Matthew Rohrer

Journals:
ACM
Barn Owl Review
Crab Orchard Review
Georgetown Review
Many Mountains Moving
Passages North
Pleiades
Ploughshares
Rattle
Redivider
Saltgrass

I give C. Dale a hard time below for thinking we'd already met, but on Saturday (again), I was at lunch with a poet friend, and he was trying to remember the name of a restaurant we had lunch at in Colorado Springs, and for the longest time I was thinking "We never had lunch in Colorado Springs. What is he talking about?" He went into such detail about the restaurant that I knew which one he was describing, and only then realized that he was indeed correct, and we had lunch there when he came through town a few years ago. So I was a total idiot much of Saturday.

Any kind of lengthy post about AWP is going to end up being a ridiculous namedropping fest plus a gossip center, so I've decided to take out all the names to protect my friends, the innocent, and myself. I may remove certain other identifying information when the story is potentially embarrassing and I like the person. It'll also discourage the really boring "I met A, B, and C!" items. A few of the blanks will be really easy to figure out from reading this and other blogs, but I'm keeping with the theme.

• The first person I knew that I saw was ____, but I didn't actually end up talking to him until right before I went to bed on Saturday night, so in a way he bracketed AWP for me.
  
• I ran into _____ just as I came out of the registration line, which was fortuitous, as he showed me where our room was, and then we grabbed a drink, the first of quite a lot I had over the four nights.
  
• Speaking of _____, the single funniest story from the conference for me was him blurting "Rock Baby" to _____(2) as a way of saying he remembered _____(2)'s poem with the rock baby in it.
• _____ recognized me in the lobby and introduced herself, which was good because I had been wanting to tell her how much I like her poetry, etc. Sadly, we only talked for two minutes (truly) before she had to run off because her friends were waiting on her, and then I didn't see her for the rest of the conference. Or it's possible I did, and missed her (see below), in which case I apologize.
  
• _____ recognized me at the book fair and said hi and congratulations on the book. I didn't even know she read my blog. I felt like it should be the other way around: I should be introducing myself and saying "You wrote ____, and it's super."
• _____ was convinced we'd met last year, but if you read my post-AWP post of last year, I specifically mention not meeting him, and he wasn't under the impression that we'd met then.
• _____ has always reminded me of a beefier Edward Norton, so I was amused at the Poetry and Comix panel to hear someone mention that to him (or rather to hear him responding to someone mentioning it).
  
• The drunkest I saw someone was probably _____ at his book release party. _____(2) apologized for being drunk that night but was nowhere near as drunk as _____, who was far into the "I love you all"/huggy stage.
• _____ was also pretty drunk in the lobby that same night, but we're good, and he's still teasing me about choosing not to go to _____.
  
• _____, who read at two offsite readings I attended, is a dynamic performer, but I can't stand what he's performing, or the melodramatic flourishes.
  

The Anti-/diode reading was just great. About 90-100 people showed up. Every reader was in the good-to-great range, and no one took too much time. From that reading:

• _____ read a collaborative piece where people stood up in the audience and read parts of the poem for him. He didn't actually tell anyone outside his chorus that he was doing it, so it was an interesting surprise.
• _____ opened by reading his grandmother's blurb of his book. (Okay, that's me.)
  
• _____ read his hilarious "Sestina Aguilera," which I had not previously encountered.
• _____ opened by claiming that the organizational e-mail to all the readers was missing punctuation, so he was going to follow its instructions and read "35 poems."
• _____ prefaced a poem about pickup lines by saying he had used it to exchange numbers with a woman in a bar that (or the previous) night, and she was now here at the reading. He claimed to be entirely serious.
  
• _____ read a poem he later said he had written specifically for the occasion, and it killed. My favorite part was the line about "I am drinking beer in front of about 100 strangers" (which he accompanied by taking a drink of his beer), followed some time later by a line about how he was going to pick one of the strangers and follow them home at the end of the night. Now that I've written it, I realize I really can't do justice to the creeping/creepy humor of that line.
  
• _____ was escorted to the stage by two lovely young ladies in lingerie. And yes, her dress was spectacular.
  
• _____ said that the number of poems he would read was a secret, but he did include a poem with a rock baby in it. His new bald mullet (is that officially called a bullet?) suits him.

Post-reading, I was totally drained. Actually, I was pretty frazzled setting stuff up for it on Friday, so it's entirely possible I seemed like a spazz to two thirds of the people I met. I hate that.

• _____, with whom I've chatted numerous times, was signing at the Sarabande table when I walked up to it to find a book, and I didn't notice she was there (I barely even registered someone was sitting in front and slightly to the left of me). She got my attention eventually, at which point I felt like a complete ass.
• I ran up behind ____ on the street because I knew him from online and knew he was going to the Fence reading, and I didn't know the way. It's still not a good method to introduce yourself to someone, though. Also, he didn't know the way to the reading either.
  
• _____ was in the initial announcement for the Fence reading but not on the program once we arrived. Also, _____ was on the program but not in attendance. I wonder what happened.
  
• _____ has a tramp stamp. Actually, at least three other writers I know had tats that I did not remember from previously, in addition to the quite a few I did remember. Must be a trend.
  
• _____ said of me, "He's tall. If he had any hair, he'd be even taller." She also flattered me by guessing my height at 6'3".
  
• _____ let me have a sip of scotch from her flask. I feel most privileged.
• _____ owes me $10 for my book. He knows who he is. Fortunately, I trust he'll send it along (or hand it to me if I see him at his reading tomorrow).
  
• I really despise the _____ hotel chain. Uh, okay, maybe that one's pretty easy to figure out.
  

I wanted to mention that if you visit Linebreak this week, you can find me reading the Susan Meyers cover poem. It was an interesting experience trying to figure out how to enunciate someone else's poem, where to pause, where to increase emphasis, etc. Still, I think it came out okay, and I hope it does justice to the poem.

I'm taking off tomorrow immediately after work, so likely no post tomorrow. Here are a few AWP-related items:

• I just finished shopping for the nonperishable items for the Anti-/diode reading Friday, February 13th at 7 PM in Curtiss Hall on the 10th floor of the Fine Arts Building at 410 S. Michigan Avenue (less than half a mile north of the Hilton, and on the very same street, so it's easy to find). Don't worry, there will be booze and finger food.
  
• Here's the current reading lineup for the event, which should rock:
  Bob Hicok
  Mary Biddinger
  Jake Adam York
  Paul Guest
  Noah Falck
  Joshua Ware
  Steven D. Schroeder
  G. C. Waldrep
  Patrick Lawler
  Lee Ann Roripaugh
  Brent Goodman
  Adam Clay
  Matt Guenette
  Ada Limon
  Beckian Fritz Goldberg
• If you need a ride from the hotel to the event, talk to me beforehand. I'll have my car there, and will have to haul the stuff I'm carrying to the event. You'll just have to be prepared to leave a little early, as I'll need to pick up a couple things and help with event prep.
• Another place/time you can assuredly find me on Friday is in the book fair at 2 PM, as a ridiculous number of good poets will be signing books there at that time: Jake Adam York (SIU Press/Crab Orchard), Kathleen Rooney (Switchback), Wayne Miller (Milkweed), Mark McKee (Diagram/New Michigan), Neil Aitken (Anhinga), and Amy Lemmon (Red Hen) among (most likely) others.
• The Shedd Aquarium is close to the hotel. I may have to drop by. I like aquariums.
  
• I'm also looking to buy a Chicago-specific gift for my girlfriend while I'm there. Any suggestions?
  

The new featured poet at Anti- is Stacey Lynn Brown. Read selections from her new (first) book, Cradle Song.

Hey hey, finished up a draft. I stole the title from "Anecdote of the Jar" by Wallace Stevens, one of my favorites of his along with the poem referenced in the subject line.

And you can see my poem "Deathmatch Mode" from Torched Verse Ends.

Hi there! I'm going to be at AWP. If you're going to be at AWP, you can definitely meet me at this event:

Anti-/diode offsite poetry reading at AWP Chicago: Friday, February 13th at 7 PM in Curtiss Hall on the 10th floor of the Fine Arts Building at 410 S. Michigan Avenue (near the conference hotel).

I'll actually be there well before 7 and likely until well after 9. If you can't make it there, you may well be able to catch me at some other point during the conference, but do let's try to set it up beforehand. It's hard to coordinate by phone during the conference, and God knows I haven't unmet people since last year's event kept me busy pretty much straight through.

If you're interested in buying my book, I'll have a box of them, so bring $10. I'll also trade for your full-length if I don't own it already.

I'm happy that my book will be available from Small Press Distribution soon, and that I should have another reading lined up soon as well. I'm also happy that someone at the reading last night remembered my work from Iron Horse Literary Review based just on my first name and location. With that in mind, here are a few happy premises:

• Any argument that contains the phrase "let's face it" is a bad argument.
• If you're at a poetry open mic, you should leave the instant anyone arrives with a guitar.
  
• A baby's cuteness is proportional to the closeness of your relationship with the parents.
• There are few better keys to happiness than the ability to say "no" without feeling guilty.
• If you tell someone you're a poet, they will ask "Who's your favorite poet?" or "What kind of poetry do you write?" and not understand either answer.
  

Not to be confused with lazy ass-bullet points. You don't want to know what those are.

• You might want to check out Verse Daily on, oh, about Saturday or so. Just sayin'.
• You should definitely go congratulate Brandi on her good news.
• I just finished reading Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash, the first novel I've read in quite a while. I thought it was really good except for the two egregious multi-page infodumps on Sumerian mythology which didn't really make what they sought to explain any more plausible. But the rest of the book was an exciting and enjoyable story that adopted the best parts of the cyberpunk genre with humor and with Stephenson's history and linguistics obsessions (which I guess were in their nascent stages for that early book). I only wish the end hadn't been quite so abrupt, because I was still enjoying things.
  
• Last year, having to choose between watching House or Chuck would have been an easy win for House. But after last season and this, Chuck has caught up almost all the way and/or House has fallen back almost all the way. House wins out tonight because it's the 100th episode, so they might pull out something special, and Chuck is in 3D, which is a stupid gimmick I don't have glasses for. Next week, I may switch shows.
• Two St. Louis poetry readings this week, including Poems, Prose and Pints at Dressel's Pub, which will include basketball buddy / fiction writer Michael Nye, and Delmar Revisited at the Observable Readings at Schlafly Bottleworks. I'll probably be attending the first but not the second. It's a busy week for me all around.
• I hit the winning shot in two of three basketball games Sunday. Best I've played in a while, even though I'm only now starting to get back into shape.