The Poetics of Class & How to Write Ourselves Back to Relevancy

1. With the help of essays like “A Question of Class” by Dorothy Allison and “Gender, Class, and Terrorism” by Michael S. Kimmel, my students and I have been thinking about class quite a bit this semester. To borrow a phrase from bell hooks, if anything is true, we are desperately trying to figure out where we stand: the pink slips, the credit card bills, the student loans, the knock-off designer purses. But – I have to ask – what about the poetry?

2. In “Where We Stand: Class Matters” bell hooks argues that, unlike race and gender, we don’t have a vocabulary for class. Most Americans refer to themselves as “middle class” while statistics show that most us aren’t “middle class” by a long shot. The language of class seems to be hyperbolic at best. Sure, we can name what it means to be exorbitantly wealthy or extremely poor, but where are the words to describe the rest of us?

3. If I accept the idea that poetry emphasizes creative and innovative use of language; that poetry allows us to name what, previously, was beyond the grasp of words, how can I not think about class? How can I not think about the potential of poetry to help us feel our way through these uncertain times?

4. As we continue to search for subject matter worth putting into words, perhaps it’s well past time that we, as poets, contributed to the conversation about class in America. It’s not only a matter of writing poems that examine, depict, and voice economic struggle. It’s about mining our libraries for work that already does so. Think of Walt Whitman’s apostrophe to a prostitute. Think of Langston Hughes’s poems about landlords and tenants. Think of Carl Sandburg’s Chicago.

5. Who among us will write poems for Gary, Indiana? Who among us will write poems for Detroit, Michigan? Who among us will write poems for Newark, New Jersey?

6. As we continue to decry the lack of an audience for poetry, the lack of interest in what we do as creative writers, perhaps the poetics of class offers us a responsibility, but also an opportunity to make our work relevant again (whatever THAT means).

7. Praise to all of you already writing these poems. Praise to all of you already reading them.

Books That Matter to Me. How About You?

I really think one of the best things we can do for one another (aside from offering perspectives on writing) is to share our perspectives on reading. We do it all the time, but so often we do it in private. I think it would be great if we could share/confess/list books that matter to us. My lists are below. The first list consists books of poetry that have influenced my writing. The second list recognizes non-poetic books that have nonetheless influenced my writing. You will notice that I’ve grouped several books together under one point because I tend to view various works by a single author as a collective entity.

Books of Poetry that Have Influenced My Poetry (in no particular order)

1. Tell Me – Kim Addonizio
2. To Bedlam and Part Way Back – Anne Sexton
3. Archaic Smile and Hapax – A.E. Stallings
4. Gathering Ground: A Celebration of the First Decade of Cave Canem – Various Authors
5. Macnolia – A. Van Jordan
6. Wind in a Box – Terrance Hayes
7. Meadowlands – Louise Gluck
8. You Don’t Miss Your Water – Cornelius Eady
9. Tales From Ovid – Ted Hughes
10. Blood Dazzler – Patricia Smith

To Understand My Writing Understand These Books (in no particular order)

1. Strange Pilgrims and Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. Sula, The Bluest Eye, Beloved, and What Moves at The Margin – Toni Morrison
3. Feminism is for Everybody, Where We Stand: Class Matters, and Reel to Real – bell hooks
4. A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn
5. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Edward Albee
6. The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales – Sheldon Cashdon
7. King Hedley II and Fences – August Wilson
8. The Seafarer – Conor McPherson
9. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
10. The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin – Vol. 1 – Nichiren Daishonin