In part one of my thinking out loud about what poets want, I mentioned that my biggest want as a writer was a larger audience, or maybe not even a large one, but just knowing that there is an audience at all for what I write. Every once in a while, I encounter poets who stress that we should not be thinking about what happens to work once its out in the world, that it's all about process and enjoyment and delving into the soup of your brain to make ART Mostly I think this depends on your goals for yourself as a writer--why you write, what you do. Do you write to be therapeutic? To ponder big questions? To tell stories? All three? (and maybe this points to another entry altogether.)
But ultimately, writing is about communication. Which implies that there is a communicator and an audience. When I was moving in more academic crowds, I realized there was a huge difference between them and the poets I knew on the internet and in the open-mic communities. There, you certainly did not write with an audience in mind (which is strange since they emphasize workshops so much) but were supposed to be focusing on your CRAFT (pronounced with a long ahhhhhhhh). It was declasse to talk about submissions, that is unless it was to certain high-profile journals and contests (likely judged and managed by their friends and teachers). Definitely uncouth to talk about having a website or (later) using social media to build an audience.) I once had a fellow MFA student fill me in on a supposedly informational coffee that was supposed to be about writerly biz things, only to find the poets involved, both professors, only said to focus on your work-- not publication at all. At an art school whose supposed goal was to help make artists career-ready, which I saw happening in other departments, this seemed incredibly remiss.
I was an oddball, at least at first. I had a website from the first year I was steadily on the internets and began publishing in online journals. I came to creative writing as an academic subject rather late, almost 30, having majored in literature in college and grad school. I took easily to social media things like myspace and blogs and tumblr and later platforms like FB and Instagram (though maybe not Twitter). I could build a crude website and manage a blog and this was not true of many of the poets around me. The promotion of work was how you got readers. How you formed community with other poets. Why wouldn't I immerse myself in that in the interest of doing that all-important half of creating art? Communication.
Of course, communication happens in a lot of ways. In journals. At readings. On social media. There was a resistance by many, especially poets older than me. So many people I talked to acted like the business of their work, getting out there, happened through no effort of their own...no horrible self-promotion. That awards and publications and readings just landed miraculously in their laps while they kept their eyes down on their work. I suppose this could work if you were well-connected, and many were. Or if you were publishing with giant publishers and had promotional teams and agents close at hand. But if you're not, if you don't, you spend a lot of time reminding people that yes, in fact, you do exist. In fact, you may spend far more time doing this than writing.
There was an interview I once read with an academic poet who talked about avoiding the internet. Like all the time, and writing by hand, and only checking e-mail at the public library. And yet somehow, this poets work was still being published and given awards and I wondered how it was possible. Especially since this person's work wasn't really to my taste and so many better writers struggle with finding these things even being more connected to the world. I still don't have an answer, but only know that has never been my reality, or the reality of anyone I know.
Maybe it means that, yes, the writing has to happen in solitude. Recovering from the workshop system from my MFA taught me this more than anything--all those fingers in my poems and it took me years to unfreeze the gears. To loosen the hinges back to regain the enthusiasm I had going in. But once the work is done, the second half, if you 're going to fulfill the communication part, begins to happen. It may in fact be more challenging than writing a good poem. It may make you frustrated, or jealous, or unable to tolerate it for very long. Of course, you don't have to. Many people write poems for themselves or their own enjoyment or therapy. For friends or lovers or their cat. Or write to enjoy the process and want nothing else. I am not one of these poets, though sometimes I am one of those visual artists (as evidenced by the art I make just to hang in my kitchen)
But writing for me is inherently about communication. I write to be read. Therefore, my task, as I see it, is both creating the work and finding someone to read it.
And maybe there is an art to be found in both.
