Daughter of the Ring of Fire » Blog Archive » Inside-Outers, MFAers, and Poetry in the Margins

Jun

2009

Inside-Outers, MFAers, and Poetry in the Margins

Posted on 21:04, June 5th, 2009 by EKSwitaj

Read my latest flash, Venison, at 52|250.

The trouble with trying to assign insider/outsider labels in poetry is that the social marginality of poetry calls into question how inside is defined. Is the inside the center of poetry’s marginal world, or is it the edge that comes closest to a more general social centrality? If it’s the former, than an insider would be defined as someone who is published by larger independent presses and journals (which the general public often has never heard of), is regularly linked on Silliman’s blog, or wins contests that you have to pay to enter. As Barbara Jane Reyes notes, however,

being affiliated with a MFA program seems to be what conventionally determines whether we are on the “inside” or the “outside” of the American literary industry.

A degree does not make one central to poetry; it does move one closer to general social centrality, as college students and professors are thought to be a bit more respectable than artists without formal education working low wage jobs and spending every free moment at readings or libraries. (Of course, if like me you have a degree from a tiny leftwing school that closed a few years after you graduated, you aren’t generally as well regarded.)

Claiming outsider status then becomes a way of claiming centrality within poetry (though, paradoxically, referring to poets without MFAs as outsiders can also be a way othering them, as Reyes points out). Those on the other margin of the poetry world, who are outsiders using both definitions, are less likely to care about such characterizations or to participate in po-(biz-)world debates.

What gets lost in the posturing is that some people who come from that edge of poetry or who are otherwise socially marginal may only have access to the central part of poetry through an MFA program. While it is certainly possible, for instance, to approach older poets and ask for assistance outside of academic confines, this is more difficult for women have been taught not to ask for what they need, for non-neurotypicals for whom socializing and networking can be an immense challenge, or for kids who read through every single poetry book in their school library without coming across a single living author. I’m not even going to get into the challenges of developing your own community when you’re an Aspie.