I met the late Tony Hoagland (albeit when he was still alive) over 20 years ago at a writer's conference. My first book, Nearing Narcoma, had just won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, & he seemed genuinely impressed. Too often, he said, you have to have connections or maybe even sleep with the judge to win. Wait--what was he implying? That I was unfuckable? No, no, he was apparently alluding to a scandal involving Jorie Graham, in particular the favoritism shown to her then friend with benefits, those benefits including winning the Georgia University Press Contemporary Poetry series contest, I guess. (Sadly, nearly a decade later, Hoagland himself would be embroiled in a much different controversy.) Continuing the conversation, he asked me to send him a copy of Nearing Narcoma once it came out. The postcard below is his response:
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