“Well a person can work up a mean mean
thirst
after a hard day of nothin' much at all”
-
The Replacements, “Here Comes a
Regular”
I often think about how what we as readers and scholars see as movements in literary history are, so often, just writers writing to/for/about/with their friends. I often think about literature through community. Most of the work I do is about connection and the communal. I do not, ever, want my writing to be a solitary act. My dissertation was written as a blog and I incorporated my friends’ comments as footnotes. My first collection of poetry, OO: Typewriter Poems, is titled after all the poets who I read and was influenced by, several of whom I count as friends. My press, Gap Riot, is run with/alongside my best friend. Today I sent a friend a copy of my latest manuscript. It was in response to an email of hers where she sent me her latest revision of her novel. Poets are my friends. I am constantly reading and writing back to my friends.
When my friend Kate Siklosi launched her beautiful book, Selvage, she asked me to read at her launch. I read a poem called “we, out here.” that I wrote specifically for the event. It’s about friendship, really, and the idea that we have to do our work in consultation and communion and community support. Then when my friend Eric Schmaltz asked me to read for the launch of his incredible Borderblur Poetics, a book about friends and writing and community in the avant-garde literary arts, I wrote him “OO! And I Luv the Valley,” a poem about Stardew Valley, which is, at its heart, a game about friends. Oh, also, the title is a Xiu Xiu reference. When my friend Andy Weaver launched his amazing new book, The Loom, he asked me to read and I wrote him “sequence dress,” a poem titled after a ridiculous Roxxxy Andrews flub and written in the style of Weaver’s above/ground chapbook, Concatenations. And, when my friend Stephen Cain was set to publish his truly excellent new collection, Walking & Stealing, he asked me to be his editor, and I wrote him “Torn Ontology Part Two,” a retelling of the birthday poem I wrote for his birthday collection that is made up almost entirely of music references he better get, or else. The first one is Minutemen, but that’s all I’ll give him. When I hold these four poems together in one place I feel very full.
You can see it right there in the epigraph; I called this chapbook A Mean, Mean Thirst after the first line of the Replacements song “Here Comes a Regular” off the truly incredible album, Tim. Paul Westerberg wrote the song about the C. C. Club in Minneapolis where the band used to drink. I used this for the chapbooks title because we, uh, we drink a lot together. There’s evidence of that in the poem. And because it reminds us that we’re getting together to drink again soon. And that even though we get pretty far away sometimes there’s always this thirst of the common, for friendship, for community, and for many several choice beverages, that will bring us together. Plus I’m not actually sure if Stephen and I have talked about the Replacements yet so it’s a good reminder that we probably should.
Dani Spinosa is a poet of digital and print media. She is sometimes a professor, sometimes a web developer, and all the time a co-founding editor of the feminist micropress Gap Riot. She has published several chapbooks of poetry, several more peer-reviewed journal articles on poetry, one long scholarly book, and one pink poetry book. She lives in beautiful Wasaga Beach, Ontario.
