i. literary traditions as “the house” & witnessing the “problems of the house”
in the straightjacket of the academy
*a conversation with a fellow Black & queer poet*
my response in an email:
because i’ve always been a rough & tumble kind of artist
(the underground gave birth to me)
i’ve never felt like i had to contend with the preconceptions
& standards of american poetry
[i wonder how many of us are tired of tap dancing]
not that there isn’t space & opportunity to honor those
who have come before us or even attempt to reinvent the wheel
for me though, there’s always been an awareness of “the house,” but the attitude
of the artists i came up with (shy & pretty Black punks, glamorous 3AM derelicts, philosophical midnight divas spitting glitter & pure faggotry, dynasties of street
rats whistling the avant garde) was always “i create the wave, because i am the
wave”
we believed in our hearts, that if you play well enough & long enough
they won’t be able to help themselves
eventually, they’ll come & build the house around you
& because we understood the house as fiction, it was always best to play outside i’m daring to oscillate between two dead literary genres
a meditation in the realms of obscurity they anticipate a
performance
i anticipate whether the audience can can keep up
more fun & interesting things happen outside of the house
