poetry as necessary as water… thank you Barbara Jane Reyes for writing Poeta en San Francisco, for giving shape and form to the things I have been wrestling with in beginning to research and write for this dissertation. It’s a text so perfect I’m worried my committee will think I conjured it to fit my analysis. Not the truth, that it magically fell into my lap and fit there.
Right now, because of this text and others I have collected along the way (against, almost accidentally, I don’t know how it’s happening like this) I am happy and hopeful that the things I’ve been thinking/worrying/obsessing over and about these past six months are actually valid questions, may actually be worth something to someone else, and are not just in the interest of reproducing my own self-serving intellectualism. I came to academia as an entry point into expanding my work with the/my community, but over the years I’ve felt further removed (intellectually, spiritually, geographically) from the community than I did when I started… perhaps these texts are part of me finding my way back.
