Sharing & Making Friends
Today is February 20th
In 1962, fifty years to the day, John Glenn Jr. became the first American to orbit the globe. The mission was called Friendship 7. It brought him into earth-orbit 3 times before landing in the Atlantic.
I recently learned (through the Smithsonian blog) there was a fourth orbit. .
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I’ve noticed I have a tick as a teacher. I tend to shout “sharing is caring” at least 3X /week (usually when we are about to do peer review). No, I do not teach first grade. My students are in college.
This embarrassingly age-inappropriate tick came to my attention when I noticed my students shyly smiling after I’d shout the phrase. I tell myself they smile because I am triggering their nostalgia for early grade-school, not because they are re-realizing their instructor is an idiot.
But I shout this phrase because I truly believe it. Whether someone shares half their pudding snack-pack, shares a secret, or shares a turbulent plane ride, you come out the other end feeling some kind of connection.
This makes me question my poem-sharing habits. There are very few people with whom I share my poetry.
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Three months after the mission, the Mercury capsule went on a worldwide “fourth orbit” tour to almost 30 cities, promoting and representing the US and our space program.
In Madrid the line was often a mile long. In the Philippines people trekked through 6inches of leftover typhoon rainwater to see the capsule. 50,000 Bombay residents lined up to see the spacecraft. In its first hour of display in Tokyo 12,000 people saw the capsule and after only 4 days in the city 500,000 people had seen it.
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As a teenager I guarded my writing like it was the Holy Grail. This was primarily due to my deep embarrassment and vulnerability. I was angsty, pimply, and terrified of rejection. When I first started writing I shared nothing.
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It’s no secret that the space race was between the United States and the USSR. But you know what was a secret? Almost every fucking thing in the Soviet Union.
And when it came to their space program, the only details anyone knew were the details carefully chosen to be presented to the world. The United States was caught completely off guard when Yuri’s grainy space-face was revealed.
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Today I feel very little embarrassment. I don’t mind reading in front of crowds. I have almost 50 rejection letters from the past year and none of them made me sit in the shower to weep. Yet I rarely share my poems with the people closest to me.
My childhood friends, my sister, my parents – collectively they’ve probably read 5 of my poems.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that they “don’t get poetry.”
I don’t want to put them in the position of feeling like they have to say something nice. And my friends don’t want to read endless poems about boys. It’s uncomfortable for both parties.
But every once in a while I feel sad that I can’t share my poems more freely with the people who know me the best – because without knowing my poetry how well do they know me? What kind of message am I sending?
As noted by Teasel Muir-Harmony:
According to Glenn, America’s greatest advantage over the Soviet Union’s space program was “the almost complete freedom to share experiences and new information.” He suggested that the openness of the American program—as represented by the display of the spacecraft—stood in for the nation and its political ideology: when the Friendship 7 capsule was laid bare before the eyes of people from around the world it gave the impression that the U.S. space program was real, benign, apolitical, and designed for the collective benefit of all mankind.
Friendship 7 in Sri Lanka
Tags: Friendship 7, John Glenn Jr, space
I think you raise such an interesting question here, and I love how you’ve structured this.
The other day I told my mother that if I sent her three poems: two randomly picked from a book of poetry and one of my own that she wouldn’t recognize mine, because I’d changed so much as a writer (for better or worse). Truth is, she wouldn’t know my work because I’ve stopped sharing it.
I too have stopped sharing because I don’t want people to feel obligated to say something nice. Last, this made me think of Nature Poetry, which means I loved every minute.
This is a pretty post!
And yeah…I don’t like showing my writing to my family, and they don’t want to see it. Except when I write non-fiction about hilarious things that happened. My brother likes that, and is very helpful, because he remembers things much better than I do, and will correct my errors.
I don’t think my dad wants to see it. He is disturbed by what I do. He often asks, with great trepidation and confusion, “How is your writing class going?” My friends (though I love them dearly) don’t take what I’m doing very seriously, so I don’t want to ~*degrade my art*~ by even asking if they might want to look at it. SO THERE.
“he is disturbed by what I do”
HAHA!
I’m in the same boat. I don’t usually share my work with those around me because I generally don’t respect their opinions about literature. And I’m not striving to surround myself with “yes men” or any other self-felating maneuver for cheap validation, I just can’t stand their remarks. They think poetry is shitty sonnets, beatnik nonsense, or “The Man from Nantucket.”
Of course, these people calling you “pretentious” for wanting to write poetry doesn’t exactly make me want to share all willy-nilly, and what not…
This weave works really well — cool structure.
Thanks, Sam. I’d just talked with JJ about the idea of braiding my poems together in my thesis (and what that might look like) so I guess this was me testing the weavin’ waters