Poetry and Community-- David St. John

This is my first day as a guest blogger for BAP, and it is impossible not to begin in this way -- by echoing the hopes of all of us for the safe return of the masterful Craig Arnold, who disappeared on April 26th while hiking on a volcano in Japan. Craig's brother Chris arrives in Japan today to help with the search. I first heard of Craig's disappearance from his close friend, the wonderful poet Jessica Piazza, who is finishing her Ph. D. here in Los Angeles, at USC. Then followed the many emails and Facebook postings to help galvanize the poetry community into action, getting the story to the news media, building pressure on the American Embassy -- which has been closed for a holiday -- to push for more search support. 

Poets -- and all artists -- are often accused of terminal self-involvement. Yet my experience has been exactly the opposite with the community of American poets. When one of our tribe is in trouble, when one of us has been lost, the tides of concern and support seem to me to be extraordinary. When my own best friend in poetry, Larry Levis, died, I found my answering machine and email flooded with notes from both pals and strangers, some simply expressing their sadness or their sense of loss to our larger poetry community, others talking about what Larry's poems had meant to them. I know it was the same just three weeks ago, when we heard about the death of Deborah Digges. Poets don't turn their backs on difficulties, I've discovered; whatever the common wisdom has been about artists, the poets I've seen in this country turn with a mature clarity and a profound hope to face those troubles.

And we continue. Whatever else, we continue.

Comments

[Jenny Factor]

David: I'd never before framed it the way you did, but I think you're right. Poets are perhaps more comfortable than other groups with the complex and liminal states associated with crisis and sorrow--we dive through them, we don't feel they belong to "some other person", even if they're shared by "some other person". Certainly, that hands-off social dynamic that Malcolm Gladwell describes in the Kitty Genovese chapter of The Tipping Point doesn't apply to poets. We know for whom the bell always tolls, because we've chosen to be implicated by all bells. We are not seekers after dry spaces.

Sorry I've rambled on. It's just good to hear this idea affirmed, this community that it's so healthy to be able to believe in.

All that said with continued prayers for Craig. And with a thank you to you.

[Laura Orem]

I would also like to add that, in my experience (and with perhaps a few exceptions), poets are good folks.