Interesting New Poet

Because I didn't have internet access during my trip, I will continue to post thoughts and things from AWP and visiting New York as time allows over the course of the week. Here is the first:

At the AWP conference I attended a panel on translation that was very interesting, and one of the panelists was a poet whose work really resonated with me. Hélène Cardona is one of those gifted people who are able to do anything and everything. She talked about translating and how she uses it in her creative process, and she read briefly from her recently published first book, The Astonished Universe, a bilingual book with versions of the poems in both French and English, and the poems she read were fantastic. Listening to her read a poem in English and then in French highlighted for me the difference in how I experience poetry. The sound of the poem as she was reading it in French was a much more visceral experience for me than in English, and I think that the sublime feeling of losing myself in the language is harder to find in English because I have studied it so intensely. My knowledge has given me a depth of understanding that makes up for the loss of that sort of naive wonder, but having the French and English together allowed me to get the best of both worlds.

Literacy- Without it, these funny black marks would be pretty boring

In the 2007 edition of a study by Central Connecticut State University, Denver is now 4th on the list of America's Most Literate Cities. Having a good library system, two major daily newspapers, and a decent number of bookstores are the major factors behind Denver's ranking, and I feel quite fortunate to have grown up here for some of the same reasons. (As a side note, the most popular book at CCSU is "The Davinci Code." I'm going to have to stop looking at those stats or will take an army of Obamas to restore my hope in this country's future).

* * *

Tomorrow I leave for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs 2008 conference in New York City, and I am very excited about it. I had a fantastic time the first time I went to AWP in 2006 when it was in Austin, but this should be even better. In all my travels, I've never visited New York City, and the timing couldn't be better as several of my friends have moved there over the last couple years. Four days isn't much time to both enjoy the conference and visit the city, but I'm going to do as much as I can.