No Help for That | Jackie Clark

First off, apologies for what I assume is a late repost of this essay.  I just bumped into it in my Google Reader on The AWL last night.  Am behind in reading HTML Giant too, but I suppose I will see soon if they too linked to this essay as well.  Here’s the link to The AWL post.  Pretty funny, as The AWL is proving itself to be.  I’m a new reader of the blog, just burrowing in, getting running gags, etc.  Here’s the direct link to Daniel Nester’s essay “Goodbye to All Them” published by The Morning News, a site that I don’t really read but that I bump into now and again.

Now, when I read this essay last night I immediately wanted to post the link to my Facebook but then decided against it, so as not to seem * dramatic*, as I have a bunch of “poetry friends” on Facebook and didn’t want to make it seem like I was *aligning* myself with Nester’s message.  So, I’m posting it here because I think other “New York Poets” should read it.  Not because I want them to agree, not because I agree, but because the essay is there and it is bold.  Does it take some cheap shots at the “poetry community”?  Yes.  Does it make the “poetry community” look like a snively bunch? Yes.  But does he hit the nail on the head, as it were, about much of “poetry community” precedents and practices?  Yes.

I am not interested, though, in presenting an arguement for or against this essay.  Bumping into this essay was a nice surprise for me right now.

I write poems.  I love poems.  I love the feeling I get when I am looking at the things around me and I notice the shining in them.  I love that that is something I can share.  And for what it’s worth, that it is something that will always be mine, no matter the “community.”