Post-AWP: Saturday evening QB.

Got home from Chicago about two hours ago, knackered and in serious need of networking detox. Not that I went to AWP to network per se, but one cannot go and not get caught up in the hobnobbing. Before lunch today I ran into a colleague where I teach who confessed that he wished he could leave today instead of tomorrow; he looked like the crush was beginning to get to him, too.

So I find, once again, that AWP has inspired contradictory and ever-warring feelings within me. The dizzying array of panels, sessions, readings, and one-on-ones is a joy to see, yet more and more I'm convinced that this conference is for publishers, editors, and grad students, and not for the average workaday writer striving (in my case, grasping) at his craft. (It could be that the sheer tonnage of offerings is what makes me say that.) Even if it is for that person--and there were several delightful panels I went to that seemed to have craft and that person in mind--it's just as much, if not more so, a place for contacts and networking. My fiancee makes the case that marketing is important, too, and I know she's right, but marketing is icing on the cake in the poetry world, by and large--it's not a money-making proposition.

So I found myself wandering from ballroom to conference room, book table to book table, feeling a little overwhelmed and honestly, a little jealous. At the same time, I talked to a few of the small-mag editors, two of whom had just launched their independent mag last fall and had high hopes for it. I and a friend lingered for a while at the Sport Literate table, where we had a nice conversation about baseball poems and such. And I got energized to submit again soon, and I was thrilled, in a way, to see there's such a presence and passion for the written word.

But after it was all done, and I said goodbye to my friends outside the Hilton, zipped up my jacket, and jumped into a cab, I felt like crying. Mostly I felt bad about ignoring my duty to write, and it was all I could do to shake this nagging impostor syndrome. It was like how Joe Christmas walks past all the front porches at the end of Light in August, wanting to be included but feeling forever an outcast. And I wish I had the gift of gab more often, the ease of chatting it up with editors and publishers. The fact that I made myself linger at a few tables and talk for a while was nothing short of amazing--but all the same, what I wasn't saying was "Take my poems--please!" And I realized that sounded like groveling, and then I felt bad for feeling the need to grovel.

Here's what I believe, and I discussed this at length with my friends over lunch. AWP can be fun and stimulating, but it's a distraction from what we all need to be doing, and that's creating. The marketing and publishing happen if they're meant to happen, and a lot of stars have to align. Until then, one has to take pleasure in the work. That's where life is.