Elephant

Kwame,
Thoughts on community. Best, I think, to start with us. We're born one year apart: we've both been at this for some time. You've published 12 books of poetry, I've published 9. You've got a university position; so do I. So, how come, until this blog, we've never met? never read together? never been anthologized together? (to my knowledge) never been published in an issue of a zine together? (again, to my knowledge) never been at the same conference? and so on? I've never heard you read nor have I ever held a book of yours in my hands. And I can same the same about Patricia Smith, Jeffery McDaniel and Rachel Zucker.
The point is this: I find that I am constantly in contact with the same group of poets who see poetry pretty much the same way I do. For instance, last week I gave a reading at MoMA. The other poets with whom I've read are very good friends of mine and, scanning the packed audience, it seemed to be filled with sympathizers. What we read that night was really opaque, difficult stuff. I read from my new book "Traffic", which is 125 pages worth of transcribed traffic reports from a NYC all-news station: tedious doesn't begin to describe it. The other readers read equally forbidding work. As usual, at the end of the show, we were met with thunderous applause.
Again, of my 9 books I've published -- all preposterous propositions and all highly "unreadable" -- I've never gotten a bad review. And I've been reviewed a lot.
Now, all of this is not to boast, but it strikes me that I am surrounded -- insulated, I might say -- and only in dialogue with like-minded people. As time goes on, I'm finding this stratification more and more disturbing. Have worlds become so separate that we are destined to speak only to those who see the world the same way we do?
One of the reasons I'm so interested in being on this blog with you, Patricia, Jeffery and Rachel is to be able to engage directly with poets from outside my own "community." This sort of opportunity is very rare.
I welcome the other bloggers' responses as well as responses from readers to see if we can't open up a discourse about another type of diversity, one that is, I think, a real elephant in this room.
Kenneth