blueprints

xvi | Katharine Coles
ally resonant, the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute asked them to tell their
stories, focusing both on practical concerns and on answering the question
“Why do this?”—and thus focusing on the values they work to express
through their labors. They have been unusually generous and open in their
responses, not only about their successes but also about their mistakes and
failures, which they frankly examine here. Taken collectively, these essays,
and the stories they tell, communicate both why this work matters and
something about the people who undertake it—people who, to a one, have
had their own powerful encounters with poetry in community and want to
create similar opportunities for others.
So:
Elizabeth Alexander, Cave Canem, Brooklyn. Lee Briccetti, Poets House,
New York. Sherwin Bitsui, Navajo Nation, Tohono O’odham Nation, and
Nizhoni Bridges, Utah and Arizona. Alison Hawthorne Deming, University
of Arizona Poetry Center, Tucson. Dana Gioia, Poetry Out Loud, Washington,
DC. Robert Hass, River of Words, Berkeley. Bas Kwakman, Poetry
International, Rotterdam. Thomas Lux, Poetry@Tech, Atlanta. Christopher
Merrill, University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, Iowa City and
Somalia. Luis Rodriguez, Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore, Los
Angeles. Anna Deavere Smith, New York. Patricia Smith, Chicago Slam,
Chicago.
As I read about the struggles and experiences of these twelve people—
how they sow, what they reap—I could want to be any one of them, could
want to be part of their stories, each full of passion and of realization, even
of revelation—each brimming with moments that propel their writers into,
and sustain them through, the hard work of bringing poetry into their
communities. It is hard work. It isn’t for the timid or poor in spirit—or,
indeed, for those who are looking for praise and glory. It involves the sorts
of tasks creative people are notoriously irked by: chasing money, chasing
space, chasing small, irritating pieces of paper or e-mails, often containing
news we don’t want to hear about the canceled grant or lease, the scheduled
demolition, the poet with the flu who has to back out of an appearance
at the last second.
And, of course, this work is not for anyone who is in it for the money.
These people are way too smart for that. They do this work because by it
they are continually re-impassioned and renewed by what they make. In
this, as Tom Lux points out, making an organization that brings poetry to a
community is in its values and satisfactions not so different from making a