LOUISVILLE SLUGGERS

I'm not sure what this guy was doing there, but I was at the university of Louisville to hear poet Ed Roberson.

It was time for the conference formerly known as the Twentieth Century Literature Conference. Rumor has it that as the 21st century unfolded, a select committee considered this unpronounceable symbol of a symbol as a conference logo, before settling finally on "The Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900."

In any event, the event began with Roberson's understated but powerfully read statement, including work from two new books that will be published in the coming months.

Spontaneous Bop T-Shirt




The final speaker of the conference, holding down the slot I filled at last year's meeting, was Cinema Studies Professor David James, who detailed the early stages of Rock 'n Roll film.



At the after party we played a rousing game of "guess which poet belongs to these socks."






Also among the featured readers was Los Angeles novelist Percival Everett, who presented passages from I AM NOT SYDNEY POITIER.