Radio Days, AWP Chicago & Valentine's Day

Many, many thanks to Michael Aaron at Virgogray Press Radio for the fun midnight interview earlier this morning. There was more chatting than reading poems, but it was laid back and we cover lots of poetic topics in our discussion (plus politics, religion, music and drugs). I wound up reading "Los Angeles" and "Siege" from After the Poison and "The Virgin Mary Appears In A Highway Underpass" and "Put Yourself In My Place" from Slow To Burn. I closed with "Night 65," which Michael actually inspired three years ago when I met him in San Antonio at the launch of Slow To Burn. The interview has now been archived and you can listen to it at VPR's BlogTalkRadio site.

Many of my poetry friends are at AWP in Chicago this weekend. I have to admit, I'm happy to be at home chilling out. A good friend and fellow poet who is actually in Chicago called last night and described AWP 2009 this way: It's not as big a clusterfuck as last year in New York, but pretty damn close. That's all I needed to know. If you want to catch up on some of the AWP shenanigans (which is the perfect word for it) check out these blogs: C. Dale Young, Reb Livingston, Anne Haines and Paul Lisicky, who has some photos at his blog. Tons of folks are uploading photos to Flickr, too.

Hope everyone has a happy Valentine's Day. If you don't have a sweetheart to love on, don't forget to love on yourself.