Recently I’ve been thinking about the importance of community and the pointlessness of an isolated practice in anything. This is the short version. The long version begins with The Grand Piano, a series of “collective autobiography” books by the Language Poets about their experiences together in the late seventies. The books have been enjoyable, learning about their lives and the movement, but only yesterday, reading Barrett Watten’s passage in the 5^th book of the series, did their ‘thing’ being to clearly emerge. That is, a stress on group dynamics and honesty rather then on an individual aesthetic or the craft of a poem; coming up together or all boats will rise. Watten mentions the modernist movement as cementing the artist as individual, and in thinking about some of my favorite poets, like Wallace Stevens; the awe one feels when reading a Stevens’ poem seems built in, and results in a distancing effect. Never am I inspired to write after reading a Stevens poem, and if I try I fail, discouraged by the perfection of his words and ways in my mind.

Then again, other favorites like George Oppen harp on the notion that we live amongst each other by choice, and in reading him I feel as if I am gaining know how of what’s going on, akin to reading a newspaper or an essay that resonates. His form inspires me but his clarity of thought seems singular, though I’ve had more success after reading him than Stevens. I’m coming to realize that the emptiness that is showcased at the center of a lot of my writing (and myself), is not just a thing that happens to be there, but a result of the method by which I choose to write and live. I’m talking about the immensely competitive ‘best-writer-in-the-room’ mentality that I’ve been developing since college. Its affect, though helpful for producing fine tuned pieces of art and gaining individual recognition, is unsustainable as a way of life in a world where frequent if short interruptions/communications/events (think email, text messages) determine the rhythms of our lives, for better or for worse.

In a way, what I’m trying to say is that my mode of being is outdated. More importantly, I’m trying to say that living right as an everyday process and the value of living immediately and without compromise sustains people in the long run. That accord, though subtle and anything but spectacle, is a preferable way to live; the life as art kind of thing rather than the other way around. In terms of my past practices, I’ve willingly alienated myself in name of ‘art’. This seems wrong, not in the sense of an individual choice, but in a communal this needs to change if we want to keep on living, persevering.

To me this is what the language poets were suggesting, at least in The Grand Piano. In practice, who knows if that’s how it turned out. But I imagine that this is how the language poets could be read: that ultimately a book is credited to a single author and in this context, talk of community seems like lip service to an idea that ultimately showcases the individual: the individual as our most basic unit of our humanness, our dasien, our being; that can’t be transcended. How to co-exist as an individual and a member of a community seems to me, one of the more immediate questions that they raise.

Or, what’s more helpful and less Californicated to me, is the realization that 20^th century poetry is full of tragic stories and craziness. The idea that poetry must somehow trace the border of mental illness to be authentic has, despite our best intentions, stayed with us and our culture. Kurt Cobain, Nietzsche, Karl Marx, whatever infinity; the life of self/other-destruction. Instead, maybe it would be more helpful to look towards the long term model and use this as a basis for value. That the measure of an artist should not only be gauged by the work but by the artists ability to “be there”, or simply, to persevere and adapt. Robert Creeley, though some people say he did his best work when he was young, lived on and taught and was available: a model that changes and knows that there are other ways to be.