A Seat at the Table
Some thoughts on poet as identity, honoring our values, and mitigating the disconnects with capitalist work culture
Photo by Sagaya Abdulhafeez on Unsplash
Yesterday, during an acupressure session, my therapist asked me what I do for work. I launched into the usual, “I write. I do a lot of business writing and content strategy. I also teach poetry. I write poetry.”
Truth be told, I dread that question. Always. Admitting I write poetry and include it as a focus in my life usually results in blank stares and a quick change of subject. But she chimed in: “I have a dear friend who passed away recently. She was a lawyer. At her memorial service, I learned she was also a published poet. I never knew! I want to read her work now.”
It got me thinking about the mini crises I have whenever someone asks what I do. For most of my adult life, I have tried to keep my work persona and my poet persona very separate. Perhaps my therapist’s friend didn’t share her writing accomplishments because it would have seemed strange—alien even—to her lawyer colleagues.
The split identity conundrum
Does this sounds familiar to you? Cultivating separate identities? Feeling split? Like most of us, I am a working poet, meaning I work on poetry while working to make a living so that I can work on poetry. Maybe you are trying to squeeze writing into full-time caregiving. Or you are retired and embracing the poet identity after a successful career in ______________.
I have multiple identities for “work-work.” On top of those, I am a mother, a partner, a writing instructor, a newsletter writer, and a small business owner. All this in addition to any poeting I do (autocorrect changes poeting to posting, which says something, doesn’t it?).
Maybe roles is a more accurate term, but for me the implications are deeper than that term suggests. I stopped telling work colleagues my actual degree (MFA) long ago.
I wonder: What did Stevens’ insurance buddies think of his being a poet? When did they find out? Also, hasn’t our culture drifted even further away from appreciating people who look for nuance and depth of any kind since Stevens was splitting his time between insurance and poetry?
Minding the disconnect
Identities are constructs built on shared values. I have found it hard to reconcile my poet-self’s values (unmitigated experience, curiosity, nuance, contemplation, beauty, insight) with the shared values of the workplace, a.k.a. the dominant capitalist culture (all activity viewed through the lens of marketplace, efficiency, simplification, productivity, output, scale).
No one except my immediate family, closest friends, and my students knows how much I value poetry. How often do culturally prescribed values push my poet-values to the side? Pretty often. Too often, I’ve lacked what researchers in this Hidden Brain podcast episode call self-concordance.
Truth: I get more joy from watching the winter light in ponderosas than from finessing a PowerPoint that will help a business team “retool their marketing engine to engage consumers.”
It’s also true that I feel a sense of purpose in creating those presentations. I enjoy the people I meet in my work-work. I am energized collaborating with creatives. I love talking to “end consumers” and business people as part of the process. I hate calling them “end consumers.” I’d rather be on a hike with them, looking at trees.
I’m aware of how crazy my love of tree gazing sounds.
A tale of two “cos”
I used to think I was excellent at straddling the values gap, but then moments like this would happen: I’m standing in front of a whiteboard in an executive boardroom 2,000 miles from home, reporting marketing numbers. It’s all good news but internally I’m melting down.
I’m choking on an overwhelming feeling that I don’t belong in that room, thinking: “Wow, there are people who love the game of business, who love playing and winning this game. I am not one of those people.”
Or this experience I had while working on a research project for the largest food-distribution company in the world: After interviewing some of the top execs at their headquarters—white marble floors, brightly lit portraits of all of the company’s CEOs over the years, all male of course—on the way back to the airport, I took a detour to the Rothko Chapel.
What a contrast, to say the least—the bright, echo-y, sterile headquarters and, then, Rothko’s dark canvases that (mysteriously? mystically?) shimmered, vibrant with the energy of a mind encountering their depth. The gap between Sysco and Rothko — between co and ko — couldn’t have been wider.
It wasn’t that I was misaligned with the work or the people. To the contrary, I felt engaged in many ways. But I had spent far too long ignoring the values of poet-me.
Is this a first-world problem? Absolutely. A lot of unearned privilege paved my way to those boardrooms, though I never felt I had an equal seat with any of the executives in those rooms. Not even close. But that’s beside the point.
Give your poet self a seat at the table
There’s nothing inherently wrong with having multiple identities. It’s just that often we are expected—by ourselves, by the cultures we are part of—to keep choosing the values of one identity over those of another.
And, yes, talking about prioritizing a poet identity often points toward privilege. Certain bases are covered, even if just barely. Those deemed caregivers by society (women, minorities particularly) experience extra-high pressure to conform to “acceptable” identities. Lucille Clifton’s “Study the Masters” and “won’t you celebrate with me” come to mind.
The point is that keeping up identities takes time and attention. Values come into conflict with expectations about how we spend our minutes, hours, days. (Who said that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives? )
Every January I’m tempted to adopt a new approach to balancing the time-demands of my identities. But I’ve found most time-management tips don’t help. Instead, these mindset shifts have helped. They aren’t very complicated.
Step one: Accept that it’s not solvable.
I, like many of you, will have to continue to hold multiple identities—to make room for the values and activities that go with them. Productivity culture insists that our lives are an equation to solve and that we are choosing this hectic life in the first place. We’re not. So that’s step one: Acknowledge you’re not choosing this, and that, inherently, it isn’t solvable.
Step two: Give your poet self a seat at the table.
I intend to get better at giving poet-me a seat at the table. For most years of the last two decades, poet-me had to take whatever scraps of energy were left after working-mothering-partnering-planning-all-the-things. If this is you, I feel your pain in my heart, in my exhausted kidneys.
I still have to prioritize work-work, no way around that. But I’m designating a weekend morning—open, unplanned, without goals—for poet-me and poet-me only. I will take poet-me to a cafe where she will be unbothered by the begging dog and the laundry.
I’ve promised poet-me a few poetry-focused weeks throughout the year. I plan to be away from home for these, if possible.
I’m giving poet-me permission to read in the moments I’m not work-working or mothering, to tinker with a poem before professional-me starts her day.
I’m reading voraciously in areas of interest that feed my poems.
I’m giving poet-me time with other poets, interviewing poets for this newsletter, teaching classes, possibly attending a conference or two. (No poetry without “salt.”)
Friends ask me how I manage to keep writing. Mostly I can’t answer that question because it depends on the week or the month or the season. I just do. Somehow I keep poet-me in the rotation.
How about you? What helps keep poet-you in the mix with other roles/identities? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Upcoming Events / Poet to Poet Community
The Poets Circle: Drop-in Conversations
JANUARY: Heard in the Herd: On Poetic Voice
Jan 4, 6-7pm MT & Jan 18, 12-1pm MT
What is poetic voice? How do you develop it and how does it evolve? How would you describe yours? What is shaping your voice, currently?
FEBRUARY: Infinite Doorways: On Knowing Your Generative Style
Feb 1, 6-7pm MT & Feb 15, 12-1pm MT
How do poems emerge? Which aspects of poetic writing—images, sounds, metaphors, etc—are most generative for you? What keeps you opening new doors?
A dear writing teacher/friend of mine hosts silent writing for an hour, 3 times a week. I almost never miss spending that quiet, sacred hour at my desk, doing some kind of writing 'work'. Once, when I was just too ... well, too tired or too sick ... to write, I spent the hour reading. It a multiple-times-a-week reinforcement of how much the writing matters. Sometimes there are two of us sitting at the table, sometimes three or more. Occasionally it will be one of us, intentionally holding space for the others.
To me, the table is a place with other versions of me who want to know the poet even if they aren't poets themselves, and not just a separate space next to the others. In other words, bringing my poet-self to the table is about interaction, inspiration, and incorporation. Does analyst-me or mother-me want to know poet-me, and invite poetry to their tables, their lives? I suspect I've treated my poet-self how I fear others will treat the poet they don't yet know or understand.