I usually just lurk over here, and just about everywhere, but felt compelled to come out of hiding to say how much I adore this interview. Lovely to see Lauren Berlant mentioned anywhere - I'm the sort of dork who tried to get everyone I know to read Cruel Optimism for a year (only one other person actually read it).
There are also some things in here that remind me I need to roll back some crap in my own work that I don't want to be there but that seep through somehow.
Thanks everybody. I'll be making reading more from Alina a priority.
There is so much here to digest. Back when Twitter had a vital poetry community, Alina was my fave follow. This interview reminded my why. Her curation of poems, snippets from her daily reading, and her own work was worth being on the platform.
This interview took me to the OED to divine the roots of the word citizen — imagining I'd find some echos from the past that were contrary to Alina's ideas. But no. It stems from the idea that some "city" dwellers get certain privileges and some don't.
I am glad she touched on the notion of community — which has been central to my identity as someone who sits at the periphery of the literary world. For me, the community of poets and readers of poetry and curators of poetry is what I want to be a member of. "Membership" being much less pernicious that "citizenship" - by my reckoning.
The piece that feels more complicated for me the "solidarity" issue. Alina points out that "Writers cannot be Party animals." For me that means, as a writer, being open to discovering via my writing that my concept of where I belong could be (and likely is) wrong - or at least incomplete. So often what principled stands we take depend on what "party" we feel a part of. Contrary to what many of my fellow leftists think, I feel my obligation as a poet is to be open going where the poem takes me — even if that place is contrary to my own fundamentalisms.
It's so lovely to your name again, Dick. And yes, solidarity is complicated. I think it is complicated in a good way though... in a way that asks to imagine rather than replicate. Whenever my teens ask me why I'm not inclined to settle for the official explanation of events, I remind that almost none of our famous public intellectuals predicted the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. They had access to the best educations, the best libraries and resources, yet none managed to imagine the future. Why should I take their word on anything when they have failed to anticipate social change? Why should we believe that what exists is the only possibility? ;)
The poet in me looks at their resumes and thinks: "How will these experiences, awards, and degrees enable you to think outside the boxes in which you have demonstrated proficience?" We will always be "incomplete" in the way that you mention. If we are complete, we are dead. Everything flows and changes, to paraphrase Vassily Grossman. Openness to where the poem takes you is wonderful precisely because it exists in counterpoint to our own safe thoughts and mental havens.
" ...we converse with a poem the way we converse with a friend, a piece of music, a picture in a gallery," Adam Michnik wrote of Polish poet and peer Ryszard Krynicki. Our poems are dialogues with each other and they risk imagining an Otherwise.
This is an amazing essay. I can't say enough about it. It opens up so many pressing issues.
I usually just lurk over here, and just about everywhere, but felt compelled to come out of hiding to say how much I adore this interview. Lovely to see Lauren Berlant mentioned anywhere - I'm the sort of dork who tried to get everyone I know to read Cruel Optimism for a year (only one other person actually read it).
There are also some things in here that remind me I need to roll back some crap in my own work that I don't want to be there but that seep through somehow.
Thanks everybody. I'll be making reading more from Alina a priority.
That makes me so happy Joseph. :) Thank you. Berlant was brilliant and we have never needed queer readings as intensely as we do now.
There is so much here to digest. Back when Twitter had a vital poetry community, Alina was my fave follow. This interview reminded my why. Her curation of poems, snippets from her daily reading, and her own work was worth being on the platform.
This interview took me to the OED to divine the roots of the word citizen — imagining I'd find some echos from the past that were contrary to Alina's ideas. But no. It stems from the idea that some "city" dwellers get certain privileges and some don't.
I am glad she touched on the notion of community — which has been central to my identity as someone who sits at the periphery of the literary world. For me, the community of poets and readers of poetry and curators of poetry is what I want to be a member of. "Membership" being much less pernicious that "citizenship" - by my reckoning.
The piece that feels more complicated for me the "solidarity" issue. Alina points out that "Writers cannot be Party animals." For me that means, as a writer, being open to discovering via my writing that my concept of where I belong could be (and likely is) wrong - or at least incomplete. So often what principled stands we take depend on what "party" we feel a part of. Contrary to what many of my fellow leftists think, I feel my obligation as a poet is to be open going where the poem takes me — even if that place is contrary to my own fundamentalisms.
Anyway, great interview.
It's so lovely to your name again, Dick. And yes, solidarity is complicated. I think it is complicated in a good way though... in a way that asks to imagine rather than replicate. Whenever my teens ask me why I'm not inclined to settle for the official explanation of events, I remind that almost none of our famous public intellectuals predicted the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. They had access to the best educations, the best libraries and resources, yet none managed to imagine the future. Why should I take their word on anything when they have failed to anticipate social change? Why should we believe that what exists is the only possibility? ;)
The poet in me looks at their resumes and thinks: "How will these experiences, awards, and degrees enable you to think outside the boxes in which you have demonstrated proficience?" We will always be "incomplete" in the way that you mention. If we are complete, we are dead. Everything flows and changes, to paraphrase Vassily Grossman. Openness to where the poem takes you is wonderful precisely because it exists in counterpoint to our own safe thoughts and mental havens.
" ...we converse with a poem the way we converse with a friend, a piece of music, a picture in a gallery," Adam Michnik wrote of Polish poet and peer Ryszard Krynicki. Our poems are dialogues with each other and they risk imagining an Otherwise.
Thanks so much for responding and adding even more to my reflection on this.