Two lessons I learned this summer:
1. Some people see poetry as an avocation they can control, unlike what they endure in their day jobs. Therefore, they feel entirely justified in limiting the size and membership qualifications of their poetribes. So, if their cliques are mostly friends and/or people who have similar aesthetic preferences, so be it! And if you are well-behaved, share some of their views and do your best to be liked but fall short, keep your opinions to yourself. Just accept it in hope they'll keep saying hello to you at readings a decade from now.
2. If you've offended some people in the past, they stay supremely angry. Your poems could have improved and you're getting positive feedback from other poets. But never mind. You offended someone in, say, 2004--and you and your poems are dead forever.
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