This essay was a long time coming. I am beginning to re-learn how to find value in art, which was something I wasn't certain I'd ever recapture. One must travel through the storm to escape, etc.. Shedding self-help assertion culture is hard but worthwhile.
I wish poets understood that the general population has no interest in what we do, so when we speak we are speaking only to each other. The delusion that poetry is something powerful is a straight line to all kinds of toxic positivities that are really just us lying to ourselves.
Poetry doesn't have to be socially powerful to be worthwhile, meaningful and important. There is no requirement for much of anything in poetry. This is an ultimate freedom to do what you believe will be best for you and those around you. Be content to touch what you touch.
Say what you will about me, but the fact remains that my power in the world of lit is exponentially larger than it was Friday morning. I have nothing but gratitude for everyone involved.
We can all hate on Rupi Kaur all day long, but the truth is that larger society has affirmed her as a poet and she has outsold anyone who reads this tweet by an impossible margin. Her ideas are out there influencing the world, ours are not. You have to come to grips with that.
I suspect some of the outrage comes because I have no attachment to poetry—healing from trauma and the inescapability of my solid faith-practice of Buddhist detachment. Poetry could disappear tomorrow, and I'd find a different way to do what I do. Containers are just containers.
@BriannaWu
We could skip a whole bunch of steps by just allowing men to be men and realizing that so much of our issue with masculinity has been the breakdown of social models of masculinity in favor of committee-developed ideas of what (usually women) think masculinity *should* be.
So it seems I accidentally trolled poetry twitter today. I apologize, that wasn't my intent. I'd like to go back to mumbling into the void to the same like 15 people now, please.
@MitchNobis
There is this permeating idea that what poets do is somehow meaningful on a social scale. And holding that belief is a straight line toward suffering because it is not in any way true. Setting oneself up for disappointment.
I want to be very explicit that I didn't get 'cancelled'. Everyone made a series of decisions and those decisions have consequences. That's it. It is merely consequential.
As an editor, I want to see more work from everyone I reject. Because most of the time we're moving forward, doing new things. And as long as you keep expanding and growing, your work will keep getting better.
@SouthpawLeftist
@roseveniceallan
Ah yes, a gradual rise from ~5% to ~12% over the course of 25 years.
Meanwhile, umbrella-identity ID increased twofold in 5 short years. It took ~20 years for the percentage of left-handed persons to do the same. And then 40 years consistent. Not the same in any meaningful way.
Gosh keeping a lid on this has been so hard, but I am so thrilled to announce that my debut chapbook AT FIRST & THEN has been named the winner of the Fall 2019 Black River Chapbook Competition! It will be published in early 2021 by
@BlackLawrence
🥰🥳🥳🥳
I don't know if this is something I should share here, but I'm really not doing well right now. My whole life suddenly fell apart and I have no real interest in literature or art or any of that because my brain is just so overwhelmed. If I owe you something—plz gently remind me🙏
One of the easiest ways to improve a poem with a rather small amount of editing is to remove your scaffolding. Take out what you used to 'write yourself into' the piece—you needed it to build the poem but now you can excise it because the piece stands on its own without support.
If you want to support me, show compassion and patience to others who face far more fallout from this than I do. Be better than our baser instincts. Learn to understand that our disagreement is a possibility to grow stronger than before just by making space for others.
@k_lisarae
If I could re-write the tweet, I'd probably say something simple like, "The less you expect from poetry, the more it will give to you." Or something like that.
@elizamondegreen
I have never met someone who was all-around happy who swallowed gender ideology whole. That said, I know many transsexuals who reject the ideology who are thriving & mostly invisible. There is no happiness when stuck in a perpetual state of claimed victimhood.
I have a little journal project that has been percolating for a bit, but it hasn't gotten rolling yet, really. No promises I do anything w/it, but interest always lights a fire under my butt.
@200wordslit
Look, this whole thing with Barren is way overblown. I was let go from a volunteer position. I maintain that it was a dumb decision, and said as much in a nicer way. The only way I could have stayed would have been to recant and apologize, and that would have made it much worse.
ANNOUNCEMENT:
We are SO excited to welcome our new lead Poetry Editor —
four-time Pushcart Prize nominee & author of Black River Chapbook Winning collection ‘at first & then’, Danielle Rose (
@danirosepoet
).
Please join us in welcoming her! 🌓
Okay, so a thread about prose poetry and the most common mistake people make when they're first exploring working in the genre.
First, prose poetry is nebulous and ill-defined. In a way, all sorts of writing can fall under the umbrella of "prose poetry", and we have ... /1
I try to evaluate poems by what they *do* instead of what they *mean*. Because all the action is between the reader and the poem, not between the reader and the poet.
This has been a tough year for my writing, but nothing could have brightened my day more than the news that you all will get to read "A History of Mountains". This is one of the best things I have ever written, ever. I promise. 🙏🎉🎉🎉
It is wild that these pieces that get multiple personal rejections from big-time journals are also the pieces that get straight-up form rejections from smaller outfits. This industry makes no sense at all, and you should never feel badly about a rejection as a result.
@YesikaStarr
Again, you're using a word, "value," that I never used. Power is not value. Many valuable things are not powerful. And there are countless enriching, wonderful reasons to do things aside from wielding power.
@YesikaStarr
I spend a lot of time around novice poets, and one thing that also discourages new folks can be the expectation that their work has to be 'magical' or 'powerful'. They say, "I can't do that," to which I say, "Of course you can." Because all it is is deciding to write something.
If you are a person who has ever written even a single draft of a novel, I am in awe of you. You're magical. Extraordinary. What a difficult thing to do. Throw yourself a party, you earned it.
It was a question of my integrity, and I was not willing to sacrifice my perspective in the name of appeasement. Everyone made a decision. My decision was to stand up for myself. Simple. There aren't any villains here. I was not harmed. The discussion it engendered was wonderful.
I always forget who said this originally, but poetry isn't a single, big church. Poetry is a LOT of little churches that exist in dialogue with each other. There is no singular overarching theory of literature—only a LOT of good, interesting ideas knocking against each other.
@YesikaStarr
I do not share the same hope for you, because regardless of if we disagree about a stupid poetry tweet, doing so would make me a pretty shitty person. I hope that every poet gets paid for their work, because the scarcity of payment for our labor is a huge problem.
Even when you rarely mention it (I've been breaking this rule a lot lately) being trans can be exhausting. I've been thinking a lot about Isabel Fall lately.
I'm gonna publish a book that is just all the poems I got personal invites to resubmit for from prestige mags but no one seems to ever actually want to take them. This is, right now, most of my work.
I hope my new followers understand that their primary job is to force me to finish writing this book that I am like 4/5 of the way through composing but now feel kinda 'meh' about 🙏
I am so very proud of myself. I had my first publication a little over six months ago and now look at me. This is something that, a year ago, I thought was utterly unattainable. I first "gave up" on my work almost a decade ago. What a mistake that was—which now I am correcting.
I used to get so angry at people on the internet, and then I realized how awful it made me feel every time regardless of the outcome. So I worked really hard over many years to... *mostly* stop being angry at people on the internet. I have never regretted this decision even once.
I'll be even more blunt that if you can't conceive of 'poetry' outside of its relationship to power, I compassionately suggest that that is on you and I'd beg you to consider it an exercise worth trying. Your ideas, whatever they are, will only get stronger and more firm.
✨2019 has been the best year of my life✨
*Sent first sub 1/24
*Pub'd ~20 pieces w/~20 awaiting
*Pushcart nom x2
*Great houses interested in my debut chap
*Placed in 2/3 contests entered
*My prize: An invite to resubmit to Tin House
Below is a thread of everything I published:
I'm legit a little sad that we ended up with 'flash fiction' instead of the affectively superior 'sudden fiction' as a term for short-short prose stuffs. 'Sudden' just has so much... *punch* to it! 'Sudden fiction' like BOOM and yr done. Perfect.
@YesikaStarr
No, I do not. You do not get to dictate my relationship to poetry to me. Just as I do not get to dictate anything about you. If you're sincerely interested in how I find value (a word I never used) & meaning in poems I have spoken about it at length before.
@Lizsview
@rayne_1205
@EDIQuestions
And the most insane part is that actual transsexuals with severe gender dysphoria literally want nothing more than to be moreorless invisible and not cause any kind of commotion at all because they understand basic biology and the immutability of sex.
Twitter is not good at nuance, reddit is not good at nuance, fb is not good at nuance. I feel like at a certain point we have to admit that maybe the general lack of critical skills can't be blamed on the platform.
8 months ago I was completely unpublished. Then I found torrin's work, learned a few tricks and, well, I have been doing just fine for myself since.
Which is all a roundabout way of saying that I am so immensely honored to be included here among such amazing talent.
I have a new piece up at
@MoistPoetry
today! Thank you to
@hmvanderhart
& guest editor Jennifer Funk for selecting this piece I feel might be appropriate for this kind of moment 🙏
Most of getting better at poetry is as simple as identifying a rhetorical trick you like and then trying your own hand at it until you begin to understand *why* it works. Again and again, with different things until you have filled a toolbox up with all the ways language moves.
The beauty of being a poet is that no one cares what you do, so you can literally do anything you want with minimal interference. There is a real conversation to be had about the freedom to go unnoticed, to not be required to fight. "No one cares" is a blank check to care.
I am extremely tired of this patterned response where we use the lack of something in 240 characters to extrapolate larger meanings. You just can't do that. You cannot. With such a character limitation you HAVE to be generous in how you engage or things will explode.
Two years ago that drunk, disassociated boy walked into a doctor's office to begin treating my severe dysphoria. I'm going to double-up with
#TransDayOfVisibility
and celebrate everything.
AT FIRST & THEN
@Feelsdesperate
Meanwhile, 'classic transsexuals' like myself who actual transition and just want to be left alone to get on with our lives take the real brunt of things. A whole society focused on freaking 0.7%!!! Just ignore us! We want to be ignored! 'Trans' is a case-by-case basis thing.
I have waited a long time to share this poem from at first & then. It never got picked up prior to the book acceptance, but I feel it is one of my best from that specific era, "how to write a poem while attending my first aa meeting in over a year".