This blog first appeared April 8, 2006. I was writing from a hotel room in Birmingham, Alabama, where I was speaking at the annual meeting of the College Language Association. It seemed only fitting that I should mark the blogoversary by posting photos from this year's CLA meeting, which took place in Miami. Last year's post from the CLA started off with a photo of Detroit poet Naomi Long Madgett, publisher of Lotus Press. This year, as it happens, Naomi won the CLA BOOK AWARD for her memoirs, so I begin again with a photo of her, this time inserting myself next to the award winner for good luck.
In addition to the grand banquet and awards ceremony, highlights this year in Miami included the luncheon sponsored by the Langston Hughes Society with a moving address by Amiri Baraka. The CLA luncheon featured a reading and talk by Duke University's Professor Karla Holloway, who had made an arrangement with her publishers for each of us at the luncheon to get a copy of her book BOOK MARKS. My copy landed in my mailbox today.
As always, the conference gave me a chance to reunite with old friends and colleagues too numerous to mention. Dolan Hubbard, who is a past president of the CLA, was one of the first people I ever met at an academic conference, back when both of us were beginning Assistant Professors. Poet Adam David Miller, who has been such a great help to me in my research on post World War II poetry, was there to read from his work again. And if you've been with this blog from the beginning, you'll see from these pictures that all those good friends and great scholars I named last year were back again for another round of intellectual exchange and fellowship.
And there was dancing!
As always, the conference gave me a chance to reunite with old friends and colleagues too numerous to mention. Dolan Hubbard, who is a past president of the CLA, was one of the first people I ever met at an academic conference, back when both of us were beginning Assistant Professors. Poet Adam David Miller, who has been such a great help to me in my research on post World War II poetry, was there to read from his work again. And if you've been with this blog from the beginning, you'll see from these pictures that all those good friends and great scholars I named last year were back again for another round of intellectual exchange and fellowship.
And there was dancing!
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