A few weeks back, another poet posted on social media fielding responses of what you wish you'd known when you started writing that you know now. Or maybe it was when you started publishing. I wanted to answer, but it was a crazy week, then I lost track of the thread and never did. But still, in odd moments over the past month or so, I've been musing over the question and trying to think what I would tell my 19 or my 24 year old self about writing or po-biz (the two points at which I started writing and seeking to publish in earnest respectively.)
For writing, I probably would say to read more contemporary poetry and find your voice and obsessions within it. I was so clueless with my shaky Emily Dickinson-esque rhymes and big gestures at theme. I was an English Lit major, so most of my poetry models were hundreds of years in the past as an undergrad. Also, throw out the "write what you know" advice, since if you do and you're 20 , those poems are gonna be pretty boring and self-indulgent. 20 year old me would have been flabbergasted that I had permission to write about whatever I wanted--ghosts and sideshows and serial killers. The simple dictum that you should write the kinds of poetry you want to read would have been a revelation to me at that age, rather than trying to wedge your way into anything like tradition.
As for publishing, as I've mentioned often, there weren't really role models or internet advice in those days. Poets & Writers would have been the closest I had to any sort of manual. That and Plath's journals and letters. Otherwise I was pretty much winging it. And even Plath aside, P&W swathe of information is limited to what I like to call po-biz status quo. But prior to the internet, you would have had to seek out other possibilities with a lot more effort. They were there, but the narrow world of po-biz prescribed a very specific slate of journals, presses, mfa programs, residencies--ie the ones who were funded enough, or had enough cultural capital, to advertise in Poets & Writers. Sure, the magazine has changed over the years, with features on small presses (like profiling dgp back in 2007) and is a lot more balanced now than in the 90's. But you still find so much outside of it. Journals that are newer, that thrive on social media, that spread by word of mouth.
But the influence of po-biz status quo in general is harmful. It's narrow. It's exclusive and limits terribly the people who have access to it on so many levels. A culture that prizes scarcity and depends greatly in having the reading fees to enter contests and apply to things always will exclude those who perhaps have the most and the most interesting things to say. Also, po-biz status quo centers itself in academia--in journals and contests that are funded and run by universities. In communities centered entirely within colleges and universities and blind to anything outside it. Which definitely leaves out those who do not have access to the funds or time to get MFA's or live on a shoe-string as adjunct faculty to maybe eventually find a place therein. So to prize the academic world as superior seems like a really bad idea, especially when so much poetry happens outside those walls.
In 2001, as I started publishing more and more on the web, and engaging in the poetry community found there, it was almost like this whole new way of being an artist opened up to me. But I was still beholden mentally to the status quo in terms of which journals were "a -list", hoping an mfa would give me some sort of credibility as an artist I craved, throwing money at contests I never had a chance in hell of winning. Wanting that first book so badly that it turned me into not the nicest person when I saw other people getting what I thought I deserved but could not have. You get bridesmaid syndrome and maybe you give up. Or maybe you never even send a word out because it all seems so daunting. This pathway into poetry that is so carefully paved once you're in the gate, but the gates seem insurmountable. I think of so many of my MFA peers who never made a go, or who grad school ruined their spark somehow, and sometimes they were producing the most interesting work. It's a lovely illusion, that glittering path, everything from first book contest to tenure to Pullitzer levels of esteem. Except usually it's not for you. (and if it is, it may not be that you were better, just that you were luckier.)
Getting free of it took some time and immersion in other types of creative communities. The open mics I frequented as my first decade in Chicago wore on showed me poets who weren't afraid to get themselves and their work out in the world, however they did it--self publications, hosting readings, forgeing community. As I delved more into the visual & book arts I was relived to find the nastiness of the contest culture was no where to be found. We weren't all standing on the backs of hundreds of other artists, but just doing our thing and trying to find an audience for what we do. Which may be the same audience as someone else, but we didn't have to Hunger Games-style it to get what we wanted.
I wanted a culture that inspired and rewarded going after what you wanted--not standing back and waiting coyly for someone to tap you on the head with the legitimacy stick. That rewarded opening up possibilities to other writers and artists rather than making a gate narrower and narrower and therefore somehow more desirable. That connected and fostered audiences and engaged with other writers rather than competed with them for so few "acceptable" opportunities. The same bullshit that passed as "career advice " in my MFA program.
So I guess what I would tell my late 20's and 30's self that there are so many different ways of "being a poet" in the world and find the one that makes you thrive, not the one that smothers you into silence or makes you an asshole. Don't be afraid to publish your work, make community with other writers, found presses and reading series, create the culture you want to exist. Find an audience for your work, or maybe audiences (plural), and work to reach them the best way you can. Don't worry if the status quo isn't spreading it's tiny, rigid, arms toward you in welcome. Run that shit down and build something new to live inside of.
