Thank you all for pointing out these great resources. In the process of looking for information on this subject, I came to the realization that what I don't like about emacs is how it handles keyboard shortcuts. I prefer using simple sequential shortcuts, like Control-K then x, the kind that Joe, gnu screen, and the window manager ratpoison use. I believe I may end up hacking on Joe a bit to connect it to my Common Lisp implementation, CLISP, since I know C and don't envision needing too many esoteric features, really just evaluate selection or form and print the results in a buffer. Again, thank you for the help, and I'll post again once/if I've made some progress.
I'm looking for information regarding interaction between a running lisp instance and text editors other than emacs. I'm not a huge fan of emacs, joe being my editor of choice, and I haven't been able to find something similar to slime for joe or any other text editor. I was wondering if anyone on the list knows of any project similar in scope and approach as slime for other text editors. Any information would be very helpful, even if it doesn't involve the editor joe. Thanks in advance.