In the confluence of processing a very pertinant post on Silliman's Blog, the comments therein and Jonathan Mayhew's claim to alienation from 'personal experience' I've started thinking about this idea again that I've had for some time. The idea that, socially and I guess poetically since how really can one seperate the two, I'm sort of like a bystander hollering at traffic. This would seem to indicate a sense of alienation, and I guess I feel as alienated as anyone else.

But this idea is from how I came to 'place' myself among my group of friends at whatever time. Sometimes consciously but more times not really consciously I become this person trying say things that exist just outside the bounds of whatever conversation is happening. I feel more comfortable, seeing that this is usually my mindset, when there is a group of people around talking. I probably should've pursued a career appearing on shows like The McLaughlin Group.

This tendency probably comes partly from a fear of intimacy. It seems cliched to say 'a fear of a intimacy', but I think I have it. That is, I don't make eye contact much, I don't like talking on the phone either. When I'm talking on the phone to someone I get this feeling like there's pressure on me to talk. You can't watch tv or listen to music in phone zone. Just you and the other person.

Or it might just be that I get bored easily by other people. Despite how pretentious that sounds I think its probably true. It doesn't mean that I think I'm better than you, sexy reader! Its probably just a short attention span.

Applying this to poetry/poetry world, I've feel isolated more than anything else geographically. Like others I'm sure, I think about how my poetry might have more readers if I lived in a place like New York or San Fransisco or Philadelphia. But is that all I want? More readers?

I do think that to write poetry (assuming one has spent time reading and processing the poetry of others) is to create a piece of culture. Speaking anthropo-something-ly the instinct to share would have to come with the act of creating then, right? Not that I want to show you everything I write. That's not necessarilly what desiring an audience means. To me its sort of like giving something to another person as a gift, so it exists as an entity apart from your own perception of it. But still as a record of your existence, or as James Liddy might say, one of your 'receipts for existence'.

And maybe then, paradoxically, there has to be some level of isolation. I remember a Philip Whalen poem (I think one that was to Bill Berkson) where he is basicly saying how there are so many people around that one can't get anything done. But that's just functionality, or the lack thereof when one is surrounded by distractions.

I mean a sort of maybe self-imposed isolation. Maybe an isolation that the poem imposes on itself. But maybe that's just a matter of figuring how to give it room, more functionality.

Alot of life is functionality. Figuring out how to function. In poetry, making it safe for the poem to happen. A clear connection between Persons.

Now for some reason I want to talk about poetics. (Jeez, an essay's almost in sight!) I tried writing about my poetics or whether I had one this summer, and I've come to the conclusion that there is vanity in poetics. Obvioulsy poetry blogs radically alter poetics. It seems to me that poetics was once a thing one cultivated over one's lifetime. Now its like voting straight ticket. And I don't want to percieve my or anyone's poetry that way. In November, I voted straight Dem, but only to oppose the Republicans. I don't, on the other hand, want a poetics of opposition.

As a sidenote on poetics, I don't think its a complete waste of time. Someone like Lorine Niedecker, you could definintely write about her work in regards to poetics, but she spent her whole life developing that. Its never a finished thing, a stance, a party line.

One thing I believe is that poets connect to each other, out of a proclivity that is almost inseperable from the act of writing. I like this tribal aspect of poetry. I think poetry can and should present a model for a community that exists palpably, but also flexibly. In that way, poetry commuinities can affect the whole world, which they were never seperate from anyway.

As a poet you plant your gardens, which'll have yours and others' poems in them. That's beautiful, no?