Last night's poets laureate jamboree in Freeport was . . . well, I don't know how to describe these things. Amazing to be on stage, to be welcomed as an equal, to receive a standing ovation, alongside the likes of Kate Barnes, Baron Wormser, Betsy Sholl, Wes McNair, Stu Kestenbaum, Julia Bouwsma. Amazing to do this in front of a packed crowd. Amazing to sell a bunch of books and talk to a bunch of people and receive so much confident affection and encouragement.
Yet it was also deeply unreal. I have spent my career working with small cohorts, often in out-of-the-way places, where my task, as I've said a thousand times, is to teach myself out of a job. I hate the cult-of-personality approach to teaching. I've tried so hard to keep my students at the center, to step back so they can step forward into their power. I am the pivot of the universe only when I'm writing alone--and even then I'm as likely as not imagining myself into some other character's mind and body.
I thought I knew what I was getting into when I turned in my application for poet laureate. But somehow I didn't envision the deep strangeness of becoming of public figure. It's not exactly imposter syndrome I'm feeling. I have confidence in myself as a poet, a performer, a teacher. The previous poets laureate are my friends because they are deeply humane, because they care so much about lives, because they are so curious about the world outside themselves. I have a direct and solid bond with them; they are my kind of poets.
More, what I feel, is that somehow, when I'm being feted on stage, I'm not actually doing my best work. My best work is quiet, underhand, almost invisible. My best work is sitting back and laughing when my high school kids create a noir cop drama out of a newspaper article in less than two hours; when the shy boy who almost dropped out of the program because he was afraid of poetry submits, as his final work, a batch of compressed, emotion-filled lyrics that knock everyone's socks off. These kids have become independent makers: they don't need me anymore because they have found themselves.
