Poetic Industrial Complex: Outsider and Insider 2

There have been substantial comments coming in on my previous Insider/Outsider post, which you can read here. It’s clear that folks have very strong opinions on the subject, in which “insider” appears to have become equated with elitism. What surprises me is how poets and artists can be so passive, accepting this oversimplified binary opposition of “insider” and “outsider,” accepting that there is one inside/one center, and accepting the differentiation based upon a singular thing: that pesky MFA degree.

If poets are supposed to be the ones challenging social, political, and cultural convention, why passively accept these above terms? There are many people who speak out vehemently against this insider/outsider model, but don’t go about publicly discussing how much more complex the reality of the American poetry industry is. There are many centers, if we can even talk about centers. OK, let’s talk about centers, which are geographical, aesthetic, political, cultural, linguistic, among others.

The San Francisco Asian American literary scene, for example, bears little resemblance to the New York Asian American literary scene. In fact, the New York Asian American literary scene is foreign to me, though I am quite familiar with some of its players and consider some of them to be my colleagues and friends. And perhaps both of these Asian American literary scenes can be said to be two of numerous scenes which comprise a larger American Asian American literary scene, if indeed such a thing exists. No doubt the New York Asian American literary scene’s foreignness is due to my apparent membership in the San Francisco Asian American literary scene (and the way we do things and relate to one another herein), of which the Filipino American literary scene is and is not a part. Moreover, the San Francisco Asian American literary scene is and is not a part of a larger multicultural San Francisco literary scene. So that’s three or four or five different centers right there.

And that’s only ethnicity and geography in my example above. Let’s think of adding a layer of politics to this. How about the feminist Asian American poets, and the feminist poets of color. Now let’s instead add a layer of language to this. How about the multilingual, code switching poets of color. Now let’s instead consider aesthetics. So what am I if not a code-switching, multilingual, feminist, immigrant, “experimental” San Francisco Bay Area Filipino American poet? That’s right: I am an American Poet.

[NB: I don't consider myself an "experimental" poet; I've been referred to as one.]

Ah, yes, we all want to be American Poets, and you know what? We are. Regardless of what degrees we do and do not hold, we are working inside this industry’s many centers and hence, we are not outsiders. We are publishing mostly with independent publishers, and we are performing and/or reading poetry to audiences, thus building readerships. We are expanding these inside spaces and rearranging it. And we are bringing younger poets in with us. I also want to say that I used to romanticize my previous “outsider” position, but then that got old, bitching about the inside and talking about being an outsider, because ultimately, as I was bitching and hating, I wasn’t getting what I felt like I deserved: which was publication and reading gigs.

So that’s it right there: you do what you believe you need to do in order to get what you want and believe you deserve in/from this Poetic Industrial Complex. We all do what we believe we need to do in order to get what we want and believe we deserve in/from this Poetic Industrial Complex. If we disregard this working to obtain what we believe we deserve, then what are we doing but playing a pointless Ape Aping Apes game, coveting what other poets have and succumbing to that unbecoming poet jealousy and subsequent haterism, just because they have something we don’t. However, if we are looking at more established poets and tracing their careers, then it becomes clear how they got to where they got. That is, they provide us with blueprints for how to go about building and shaping our careers. At one point some years ago, I wanted what Li-Young Lee had. Today, I got a couple of things that he has. Of course, there are other Asian American poets and poets of color who are better role models for me.

Speaking of mixing up this insider/outsider thing, I met the very lovely Randall Mann who read his terse, humorous, well-punctuated, and unapologetically raunchy poetry at Joe’s Barbershop in the Castro for the Barbershop Reading Series excellent kickoff event (will blog about this very soon), and he mentioned how he’d been enjoying reading in so many “non-literary” venues. Prior to the barbershop (a well attended, well curated event), he’d read in a motorcycle club. Next month, he will be reading for PAWA, our SF-based Filipino American artists group. For our PAWA reading, he will co-feature with Kristin Naca. Both Randall and Kristin are multiethnic poets, with Filipino being a part of their multiethnicities, and I am very happy to be able to open up our Filipino American community event to include them.

Let me finish by saying that some of the comments in response to my previous post did mention ambivalence to this binary opposition, the fallacy of the binary opposition, as well as discussions of artists’ general inward movements, with experience and exposure, this inward movement which we work on over time. Think again of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books, which started small and on the fringes, which today is a major institution. Maybe that’s the last piece of this discussion: being in this industry for the longterm, plugging away at our careers, and knowing not to expect immediate rockstar gratification.