This was not the post I had meant to write today, nor is it particularly realized or complete, but as I am practicing finishing things, I think this will do. I plan to write more about this topic — near and dear to my heart — so please consider this a first cut, a working-through, a Barthes-like introduction.^[1]

I’d had planned — months ago — to write something up along the lines of "A Year and a Half of Two Page Tuesday," which probably would have been more like "Eighteen Months of Two Page Tuesday" as my friend’s kid was just then about eighteen months, and the language of time and measure tends to stick to my brain in ways I don’t fully understand. But that came and went, and now, if you were to count the months prior to doing the readings where we were just doing social bar nights, this little thing has been going for over two years. Which really isn’t bad.

But as I was doing the reflecting and — frankly — thinking a little bit about what is next for the series,^[2] I thought about the positioning of the whole thing, about what it was for. I mean: myself, obviously. (I have cool friends who do great work, and I want to hear it read.) But beyond that, it was conceived of, and still is, a community-oriented kind of thing. The goal being, to quote Cynthia Ozick quoting Lionel Trilling on "little magazines":

And I’ve been thinking a lot about keeping new talents warm, not only because it’s been cold as fucking balls in Boston the last few weeks, but because I think this is important work to do. I mean, I’ve published jack, I like to think I have some small amount of talent as a writer, so I may be new myself, but. I certainly can do what I can to help others, new as I am in writing, old-hand that I am in putting things like this together.

So what is warm? Warm is — I think, I hope — reading in public for the first time ever at the same reading as someone who’s published multiple, very well-received books; reading a couple times from the same project, getting feedback and appreciation for the changes you’ve made; getting referred to read by your friends who’ve read before, knowing full well they’ll be there to support you; seeing familiar faces over the course of months — now years — including the bartenders, the staff at the bars; feeling comfortable enough with the group to read challenging, or vulnerable, or not-quite-yet-right work; feeling comfortable enough to read at all; a belly full of Narragansett and french fries.

This is perhaps why I’m so committed to the bit — i.e., two pages of new work — because that, I think, allows, enables, encourages all the above. The bar is high insofar as people really do bring some kick-ass, ground-breaking, deeply-exciting work, but also low, insofar as it’s two pages: why not take a risk. And because it is new, the readings themselves tend to cohere: everyone is responding to the current world around them. There is a lot of overlap there, in our little community, and so we get so many slices across that world, so many responses to it.

We keep our new talents warm by making it easy to get on the reading list; by making sure they have enough space to try but not too much space so as to become overwhelmed; by making sure everybody is nice,^[3] gets talked to, has their piece appreciated or, if they’re just coming to listen, gets pointed to someone with similar interests (poets and poets, ex-theater kids and ex-theater kids, etc.); by maintaining good relationships with the bars that host us such that they’re excited to have us (and not only because we bring them in a good chunk of beer money); by existing at all.

It is this last piece, I think, that has helped me sleep however soundly I can sleep given the current state of the world. It’s a community. We see each other in person. We interact in person. We build trust together over time. There are people in the community whom we know we can call upon.^[4]

So: two pages, new work. Easy.