A Letter to a Poet Friend: I do standout; I don't fit it

How did I survive MA?

I lived [an hour away], remained friendly and engaged in professional chitchat, and simply didn't participate in activities that weren't career oriented. By second year (much like 8th grade, ehem), alliances had been built and torn down so much that I was among the few standing off to the side amid the rubble.

Bored with each other, I believe my colleagues found me curious--b/c I kept my personal life totally to myself, most didn't realize I even [shocking aspect of myself]. Ironically, I think a few made it a quest to figure out who this [SQ] person was--lol!

Then, naturally, when they found out, most moved on. I can only remember two or three parties at the end I went to (always awkwardly). Sigh. Now? Well, I feel a little more settled in my career and I'm looking around thinking, gee, my social life sucks. The 4 friends I did make in my MA are scattered over the country and our emails have dwindled. Weekends are full of [the mundane], and, well, prison-work (more on that later).

You? Well, you are in a totally different situation. I think poetry is about community. Those patterns of behavior we develop in HS seem to follow and haunt us all the way through adulthood ([my partner] sees it at his office constantly--my Writing Center is full of it).

Personally, I think that's why I studied theory--like bell hooks, it helped me survive. Standing away from the situation, viewing it from an artificial distance, reclaiming an "outside" position in my own terms, and trying to understand myself in terms of social patterns and signifiers, yadda yadda, takes away the hurt feelings.

You? Again, your studies puts you in the center of all those complex ways humans interact and try to have power over each other--sigh. In fact, as a poet, you not only need all of that interaction, but you then have to sort it out and write about it ways that makes sense to the rest of us. Wow. No wonder you are having a rough time. That's my take on it.

So use all of these experiences as fuel for the fire--when you build your poetry high enough, we can all gather around, warm ourselves, and, heck roast marshmellows. :-)