by Rebecca Doverspike

The AWP Conference is a flurry of travel, bookfair, panels, connections, and the atmosphere a whole lot of writers in one space for a few condensed days can create. This year, WVU’s table was devoted entirely to The Cheat River Review. We gave away waves of magnets, showed our First Issue on tablets, and asked for submissions for our next issue due out soon, in April. In an effort to further engage passersby, we also asked folks to write a post-it response to the prompt, “I only cheat when I…” or “I cheat at…”. This sparked conversation about games, u-turns, grading, and, since we’re writers after all, the existential nature of truth.

When I asked for take-aways from those who went to AWP, poet Travis Mersing said he loved breathing in Seattle air. I, too, felt the most inspiration to write not from inside the conference center, but that moment after absorbing all that intellectual energy, stepping out into the air, into the city, into actual life. We especially loved the Pike Street Market. As Travis said, “hundreds of vendors with everything from fresh flowers, fresh food (the best Greek yogurt I’ve ever had!), to goods from India to Mexico.” He spent hours walking around.

Another poet, Jessica Guzman, had some take-aways from a Dean Young reading and a panel with Christina Garcia. At Dean Young’s reading, one of the audience members asked him if he believed in reincarnation and he replied, “I believe in recycling.” Jessica enjoyed this response because it brought that notion of lofty-poet down to earth (just as, I suppose, it brought a lofty idea down to earth). She also finds herself still contemplating something Young said: “One of the things poetry aspires to is to rival the body’s experience. So, it’s always in dialogue with the body.” Jessica and I smiled after an elevator ride when she told me the Christina Garcia quote that stood out to her most: “To surrender to a good cigar is to avoid time’s tyranny.” “Having grown up Cuban American,” Jessica added, “I just think it’s a good way of putting it.” I agreed.

Mary Ann Samyn also shared some insights from a group of panelists about Wallace Stevens. Here are a few of my favorite quote she shared:

Stanley Plumly:
The questions seem to be coming from the air.
Images are ideas with bodies.
Poems are images in search of a correspondence, or for a correspondent.
Nightingale is a not a bird for me, but the name of a bird.
Stevens has repetition at the level of silence.

Linda Greggerson:
The myths we inherent pass through many hands before they come to us.
The struggle is the key.

David Baker:
Stevens feels by thinking, and Roethke thinks by feeling—two approaches.
Stevens’ poems articulate obvious things said in not obvious ways.

Carl Phillips:
Blank verse is the physiology of walking.

Overall, it proved an abundant and rich time, from making professional connections with journals, attending off-site readings, to a lovely group dinner—a reprieve of both familiar and engaging conversation. Next year at AWP, we hope to present a panel about the Creative Writing Department’s community outreach programs, such as teaching poetry at Preston County Middle School and OLLI.

Xin Tian’s aesthetically pleasing array of Cheat River Review magnets, brochures, and pens.

AWP’s bookfair brings forth creative displays such as these pretty paper bouquets.

Editor-in-Chief Patric Nuttall describing Cheat River Review.

Rebecca, Jessica, and Travis working at the table.

I only cheat when I…

What do you cheat at?

Bookfair Aisles.

Patric and Jessica, working.

This is how the bookfair can begin to feel. . .

Seattle.

Market.

Poets, walking.

Xin Tian and Jessica enjoying the English Dept. dinner at The Yardhouse after a day of conferencing.

Poet travelers, wearied.

Poet travelers, renewed and ready to write on airplanes.