I’m taking a look ahead at AWP 2010 in Denver. I’m excited. A lot of poetry will be going on Thursday and here are a few of the panels I’m really interested to see. Several people ask me what the hell is AWP? Well, I usually just tell them imagine Comic Con, or Lollapalooza, but with a lot of bookworms and poets and writers who all usually like to drink together and read their work or talk about something ridiculous. (Example: see Bird Panel) It will be the first time going to Denver since I was 10. Treat me well Denver. I hope to explore a lot of your good crafty beers. See you in April.

R103. Inside the Box: Prose Poets on Form and Influence. (Gary L. McDowell,John Bradley, David Shumate, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, Kathleen McGookey,Brigitte Byrd) Why do poets pursue prose poems? What about the form attracts and commands the attention of poet and reader alike? Through various influences and experiences, many poets from different schools of poetry have found their way to the prose poem. Five contributors to The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (March 2010) will discuss how the prose poem has become abmeaningful part of their poetic lives and read from their work.

R112. The Poets Guide to the Birds: A Reading. (Peggy Shumaker, Keith Ratzlaff, Patricia Kirkpatrick, David Huddle, Rick Campbell, Holly Hughes) A raft of auks, a quarrel of sparrows, a scold of jays, a cast of falcons. Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser have edited a soaring collection—contemporary poems that focus on birds. Six poets will read poems from west of the Continental Divide. You'll hear poems from Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and our AWP Conference host state, Colorado.

R184. How to Start Your Own Online Literary Magazine: Five Editors Tell All. (Rebecca Morgan Frank, Michael Archer, Thom Didato, Gregory Donovan, Ravi Shankar) Have you dreamed of starting your own online literary magazine? Join the editors of Blackbird, Drunken Boat, failbetter, Guernica, and Memorious, five longstanding and respected online journals, as they share the ins and outs of developing and sustaining a literary journal on the web. Come hear about the unique advantages and challenges of editing in this expansive medium, and learn pointers for financing, marketing, and managing the technical challenges of a web‐based journal.

R191. The Soundtrack of the Poem. (Tim Kahl, Forrest Gander, Kristin Prevallet, Brandon Cesmat, Rodrigo Toscano) This panel will discuss the juxtaposition of music with text to elucidate the sonic qualities of work on the page. Exploring how music is foregrounded in a text, we will investigate emphasizing melody, pitch, pacing, rhythm, and counterpoint to instrumentation, and connect those qualities to the creation of meaning and emotion. Does music and language produce modes of consciousness that are therapeutic? Has multimedia's emphasis on musical qualities reasserted the primacy of music in literature?