I had two pieces of business at this year's MSA -- First up was a panel during the opening time slot on Amiri Baraka, organized and chaired by Kathy Lou Schultz, where my co-panelists were Ben Lee and James Smethurst, both of whom I've known and admired for a good long time. Our subject was Baraka and modernism, and I think we managed to move the discussion past the usual observations. And then it was my very great good luck to be part of a group poetry reading that evening. I've been making conference trips to Pittsburgh for about eight years now and have increasingly come to appreciate the city.
My conference duties concluded fairly early, I was able to spend the rest of the weekend listening to some path-breaking scholarship and a healthy, heaping helping of interpretive work.
(For the second time in recent memory, somebody asked if Meta and I were coordinating our hats.)
Final night, following a keynote by Howard University's Meta Jones, Adam McKible and Mae Henderson had organized a dinner at a nearby cafe where I met some great people I had not known before and caught up with others I had not seen for years.
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