On Community

I’ve spent many decades in the poetry community. It can get a shitty name, particularly as of late. After the #MeToo things and #BLM things and #MongrelCoalition things. So many things. Before that there were the disputes with the Language Poets, and before that something else. There have been many, many aesthetic battles over the years. And recently, many poets have sheltered themselves from a less than fuzzy feeling by “not going out anymore.” Fair enough.

But I wanted to say something about what I value in the poetry community and why I think “the community” is a beautiful thing in the world.

The poetry community, to me, is a secret underground network of people who I can visit literally anywhere and have a couch to stay on. Smallest community to the largest community, I can reach out to someone in that city or town and grab a drink, or throw a reading, or find a friend. I can have a fabulous discussion or an argument. I can learn something new or giggle or gossip for hours. I’m pretty sure that whatever our differences, I can get some fuzzy feeling out of it—or at the least, I can hone an argument.

The community is, at the core, what sustains our art, and for me, my connection to it is often what sustains me separate from my art. This can be, and at times has been, literal, that the poetry community has made my actual human life literally possible.

Since the days of Facebook and social media, the community has gotten more accessible. More people can throw their voice in the ring. This is super cool, to me. When I started out as a poet, I was literally blessed I knew a real, live poet. What if I had not? It’s difficult to google “poetry” and know where to start. There is no DIY guide (we should make one!). This is BTW why so many people pay for an MFA—to figure out how to be a poet. The community is where I learned these lessons (how to do the “business” of poetry), made great friends, had great heartache, made silly enemies over dumb shit, got over it, ranted, raved, and again went thru the whole cycle and celebrated with every ounce of fiery-bullshit in my heart: The Community.

It’s like a family to me; a dysfunctional family, but nonetheless a family (ok, sometimes I complain about its dysfunctions, but that’s not my point. The fact that I can even complain is frankly a point of function.)

In larger cities it seems to work a little bit differently, but in smaller cities I always felt like the community at its best was a place where a poor or emotionally distraught but talented youth (or some combination of the above) could walk in off the street and find a family, if they wanted. I have experienced this myself, when I was down and awkward, finding loving comrades in a poetry community, and I have been that support for dear friends.

There was an article recently in the New York Post about how one in five millennials say they have no friends. This is something I definitely experienced living in a major urban city in my twenties. My connection to the poetry community—having in-person events to attend—was literally something that helped me survive. I imagine this only grows more true as we become more digital as a society.

There is a culture of permissive discourse within the community, which means we can discuss the things important to us in whatever colorful narrative we choose. Maybe some people will say “hey that’s not true! There’s so much ‘PC’ blah blah going on right now.” Ok sure, maybe that’s true. But I still find the friends I’ve made through the poetry community generally more interesting, more expansive and more fun than any other network in the world, in my humble experience. Also, it’s a place where people can speak widely and intellectually about trauma. There is one big no-no in the professional world: don’t talk about emotions and don’t talk about pain. In the poetry world, we do, and are very good at discussing the intimate and the private.

I also, importantly, find the poetry community a place where silliness is embraced. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with “truth value.” More than film, more even than theatre sometimes, the poetry community taught me the importance of play, of generous interpretation, of laughter and getting serious about joking around. I have learned to believe these speech-forms are invaluable to survival, and they are one of my favorite things about poets. I love being silly, and sometimes these ridiculously silly or abstract inversions are the only way to survive horror.

I’m probably being naïve and nostalgic about the poetry community. Yea, but it’s a place where I can be that too. Thank you! I wouldn’t have survived without a group of people who understands that I cry at the drop of a hat (and does not mind!). Even if you thought it was weird, you didn’t say very much about it. And we accepted each other; maybe thru this weird bond for a lost art of “being gentle.” Maybe over being a thinker who is too sensorially-oriented to always be right (like philosophers). Maybe we bonded over simply a way to be beautiful in a very ugly world.

I hear people say they could live without poets, but not without poetry. Actually, I feel the opposite. When I am around poets I feel like I can relax and meander and be imperfect and silly and do wordplay into the godforsaken evening. I can also be serious as all hell (for me, typically over politics) and then in a split second completely fuck-off into whateverness. I LOVE POETS.

Finally, I think the poetry community and discussions within it have been predecessors to some of the most important conversations in American history. Like a weathervane, I have experienced discussions in the poetry community as a precursor for dialogues that eventually followed onto the mainstage. I have my suspicions there was a letter out of Oakland that sparked dialogue and eventually enough articles were written about the subject that the topics made it to Hollywood and a new movement (#MeToo) came into being. I think similar things happened by our willingness to embrace and spread #BLM—under whatever name. I think undoubtedly the movements were always going to be imperfect, but they were real, and they mean the world to a lot of people.

Anyway, I know our happy family has seen some days of strife, but I just want to say however messy and imperfect this community, I absolutely love it, and am grateful for each hug, joke, smile, inside joke, hidden reference, awkward moment, political intrigue and “oh my god what bullshit moment” has ever happened to me because of it. Truly. You mean the world to me, and thank you for everything you’ve accepted in me or forgiven me for. I know we are all imperfect, and I love you too, and I mean that.