I've been reflecting on community, the kind of community poets create and inhabit. and I agree with Ray Bianchi over at Postmodern Collage Poetry that there does exist a fraternity among poets. Bianchi also discusses pettiness and jockeying for positions among writers, but for the most part I do think poets, even if not on speaking terms, are brothers and sisters. our art collapses the barriers of time and space and even specific languages so that Catullus is my brother as Sappho is my sister.

I realize this is a conceit, perhaps, but a fruitful one. I can imagine Rimbaud or Oppen wondering what the hell I've written but even so nodding in agreement about the wonders and necessities of reading and writing. I think either old master would sit down with me over a coffee or a beer for a long passionate chat of our shared art.

and so it is among the living writers too. language is what unites, and divides, the veritable human being. being in love with grammar is already a great risk, but since we think in words, at least I do, it is a risk equal to that of great love. we may not see eye to eye on everything, hell what kind of world would that make if everyone was in agreement about everything. but writing and reading, at least to poets, is what expands human consciousness. there is no higher high to be had.