First Lucipo group reading tonight at Pane + Vino in Chapel Hill. Perhaps a report later.

Occasionally people will ask for blogs to recommend -- I'm sure most everyone reading this know most of the high traffic blogs, but if you haven't checked out John Latta's Hotel Point or Gary Norris' Dagzine, you should make those a part of your daily readings. (links in my blogroll)

An interesting debate occurred a week or more ago when Gary took exception to a statement by Joshua Corey, along the lines of JC's saying that one sacrific of going MFA is punting the opportunity for a living wage for those number of years. If I remember correctly, part of Gary's exception to this was based not on JC's experiences or background, but of those around Gary, fellow students playing the 'poor' card all the while knowing that as soon as they leave they'll be re-entering mainstream middle-classdom with a graduate degree in hand.

I also get a little creeped out when myself, or other writers, play the poor card. Or the working class card. This is mostly directed at myself, because I've had this exact same working class chip on my shoulders for a long time. I grew up in a tiny town, far from affluent, but I think I would be a jerk if I kept harping on this fact (even though I do!) as though those from different backgrounds owed me an apology. Plus, I think it's disrespectful in my own situation to frame myself as anything other than middle of the road, background wise -- I wonder how much victim mentality plays into my own presentations of myself. There was no crime where I grew up. There was no lack of food or clothes. I'm white and male and straight (& good looking!) American and my parents never divorced and are extremely generous and loving. It'd be disingenuous to present myself as some sort of 'survivor'.

I never thought about these things much until grad school where it seems, like Gary, I encountered fellow students who would play to poor card, or 'what a sacrifice I've made' card, while coming from affluent or near-affluent backgrounds. Most did not, but there did seem to be this underlying strain of wanting to play the role of the starving writer (cost of living is low enough in Arkansas that between the admittedly smallish monthly stipend of about $900 a month plus working at a writing center and Writers in the Schools and a yearly $3000 fellowship, one could make it through the four years w/o loans -- I did so for the first three years until I was paying probably more for alcohol than rent and had to take out a couple loans to get by) when most everyone got plenty to get by on.

I've made very few sacrifices to be a poet, I feel. None. Really. Coming out of high school, the two options I gave myself was to either become a logger (something I had always to be growing up) or to continue working at Burger King and go to community college. Life's been easier ever since I decided the latter, and was never easier than grad school at Arkansas. I'll admit I sometimes allow myself some juvenile self-pity these days while working at the coffee shop ("the author of Invisible Bride will now clean the toilet and mop the floor"), but I know that this is a temporary situation, and that I've chosen to work as a barista as opposed to grabbing adjunct classes in the hopes of securing more time for writing. Poetry has very much been my ticket, and when I've encountered hesitant students while on Writers on the Schools trips to poorer parts of Arkansas, I've emphasized this: I was nobody in high school, in community college. Writing has been a way of constructing an identity, of asserting an identity. It really isn't that hard, and I'm glad I've heard at least John Ashbery acknowledge this. It's easier than waiting on customers or flipping burgers or cutting down trees. You don't have to be that smart, just willing to immerse yourself to be competent, and if you're competent and willing to be a little pushy, you can play it out into a living wage and if you don't buy into Romantic self-destruction you can probably enjoy a dignified old age relatively free of arthritis and other work-induced ailments.

I think it's disengenuous to always say 'there's no money in poetry' -- hell, while I was in grad school 'suffering' my stipend for my fifteen hours a week job (6 hours in class, 9-10 hours prep and grading) and my incredibly easy workload (creative writers at Arkansas can take many independent readings and extra-curricular classes) I was making more money a month than anyone in my immediate family in Missouri -- this includes my retired parents and grandparents, my aunt who works at WalMart, my aunt who works at McDonalds, my uncle who works at a factory, my aunt and cousin who work at the same factory, my cousin who worked at a video store before her pregnancy, my uncle who worked at a convenience store but now works at WalMart. & I was putting in less than half the hours of any of the above. & I wasn't coming home with an aching back.

I think poetry is the perfect field for unapolgetically ambitious young women and men of working class background who want access to something outside their small town. I have no idea about the options for someone from an urban-poor background.

I also think that contrary to conventional wisdom, that poetry is exactly the kind of field that young smart men and women are attracted to: little to no overhead or equipment, no producers, no agents. More or less complete freedom. Why go to Hollywood and do one project every 8 years and worry about raising millions of dollars when you can stay at home and do as many projects as you want, by yourself or with others, and play those projects into humble yet comfortable teaching paychecks? Once customers at the coffee shop found out that I was a poet, and published, many actually started tipping me better and treating me in a more polite way, which is disturbing in the abstract, but in my day-to-day life is quite nice, to have an identity to others beyond 'just' being a barista.