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i like poets' origin stories but oooooof if your conclusion is just "and this is how i became a great poet; i was destined to become one" along with "oh and a famously antiblack poem is my foundational text"
white literary culture needs to stop fetishizing prodigies and "destiny," stop worshipping at the altar of "individual talent" above all else. this worship makes it easy for writers to believe their own marketing. to extend the self-mythologizing on the page to all discourse
i also think that "you either got it or you don't" when it comes to literary/artistic talent is a delusion and a construct. no one makes 100% consistent good or great work, & those very assessments shift with culture & politics. also, beautiful language is not an inherent good
and it's ridiculous to me whenever poets cite dickinson as an example—a shining model—of a totally private poet when she has written about/out of her sociopolitical world (the civil war!!), too, and we have her work now because of sociopolitical actions in editing and publishing
this is also the problem i have with "the test of time" re: literary greatness. if your work survives your own era & continues to be lauded, sure it may have merit, but that merit may be based on the protected construct of the ahistorical, not on "transcendent" qualities
if i had tried to get my book published even 20 years ago, i imagine i'd face many more hurdles. and no awards. and white critics not getting it at all. i don't think this is because my work can't speak to another era
and in terms of imagination and formal moves, i couldn't have written my book 20 years ago (not just bc i was literally 11 lol). and i'm not trying to have my work speak to 20 years ago??
if you're a writer and your work can be read very comfortably by someone from say, 50 years ago, i don't know if you're really doing your work. i'm not saying understood or appreciated. i'm saying enjoyed comfortably. your language doesn't make them sit up. doesn't surprise
the works that tend to survive are the ones that have been deliberately preserved by those with power ($, resources, prestige) & by those who are comfortably part of the intended audience (who are used to being centered, spoken to intimately by a celebrated "privacy")
texts don't just stay in print because they're inherently, mystically "great." so much from previous eras has been lost. or continues to struggle to stay in print. editors, publishers, teachers, & readers shape texts' longevity
glück's first four books went out of print, then were republished as a single volume, and now exist in a collected poems. these are publishers' choices, influenced by readers' and scholars' interest, as well as their own. many poets' worthy early work doesn't get this treatment
