I met Phil Levine when he read in Santa Barbara, not long before he died. And I met Richard Jackson for the first time last year. Meeting poets is dicey. Not all of them are in it to make their souls grow. For some, poetry comes too naturally and the art itself becomes a means to an end—to accolades or awards—for some, a small bit of fame.
People who grew up working class take one of two paths when they get opportunities beyond the working class. Either their experiences stay with them and continue to forge and shape their futures, or they pretend—that they were always a genius, or better than the circumstances in which they originated. Pretend the past never happened.
I initially tried the latter route during my undergrad years and the late Michael Burns called me out on it, in front of the entire class. He specifically said I was trying to run from my life in the Ozarks and until I stopped fucking doing that, my work would always be disingenuous.
See, I'm not a good liar. And he was right.
I mention all of this because I've always hesitated to meet my heroes in poetry. I'm trying to get over that, to realize I'm depriving myself of possible opportunities to grow community. It's part of the reason I'm applying to fancy poetry workshops or why I cold-email poets sometimes, just on the off-chance they write back. Bob Hicok wrote me back. So did Andrea Jurjević and a couple others. What I'm saying is—you never know until you try.
I've applied to Bread Loaf this year. The picture at the beginning of this post, I took from Richard Jackson's site, because it was also taken at Bread Loaf in the 1990s. Conferences like these are hard to get into and not the cheapest to attend, but poetry is the thing I want to pursue for the rest of my life, so it's what I want to invest in. I'm lucky to have the means to invest.
