The Inclusivity of the Rust Belt Poetry Scene
Out of the three states I have lived in in my life, two of them are considered cancerous on the liberal, artistic soul. I grew up in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, which largely lacks a writing culture and is considered a stepping stone to New York City.
But when I moved to Pittsburgh, PA for college I had no idea what to expect. I knew that writers had to be living somewhere other than just New York and San Francisco. There had to be somewhere affordable to live where you could find your writer tribe. It took until my senior year of college (when I had finally given up on theatre and started investing real time and energy into my writing) to really begin to engage with the Pittsburgh writing community. It was April 2019, National Poetry Month, and I went to my favorite local bookstore, Caliban Books, and purchased several books by local poet Jason Baldinger. I started with one of his earlier collections, The Whiskey Rebellion, and let me tell you, it changed my life.
I have always felt connected to the literature of the Beat Generation and I really felt that The Whiskey Rebellion echoed a lot of the same style of the beats: angsty, poor, burning in the glow of an industrial city, and constantly driving cross-country.
I spent the rest of April devouring Baldinger’s books until I worked up the courage to stalk his social media presence and reached out to him to get coffee. And when we got coffee, he introduced me to the poetry of Jeanette Powers. And then I noticed that some of Baldinger’s poetry was being published in Elyria, OH, ten minutes away from where I was moving to for work. So I reached out to that small press and it’s owner, Dianne Borsenik, who is also a poet herself and took me to a reading in Rocky River, where I met current Ohio Beat Poet Laureate, John Burroughs.
This L Word style of web connecting writers to one another is huge in this part of the world. I am not saying that people in Ohio do not know writers in D.C. or New York—in fact one of my writing buddies in the Cleveland suburbs knows my very close friend and YA author Hannah Moskowitz.
The reason I am writing about these writers is because there is a huge, thriving Rust Belt literary scene that hardly gets any notice. While it has writers of all genres, what I find particularly inspiring about it is its poetry scene. Poetry has long been for the proletariat—it is the most accessible literary form that expresses concentrated and vibrant emotions. The best poets become the best through practice; it is not a kind of writing that has a barrier to entry based on education level or diversity of vocabulary. In fact, most of the best poetry is about injustice and oppression; something the bourgeoisie have little to no understanding of.
Writing is not about who has the most wealth or the highest education—but the way a lot of writing is today creates roadblocks for people without MFAs in journalism or five years of unpaid internship experience at a publishing firm. With publishing houses being the gatekeepers for “success” for a lot of writers, they often (whether or not it is intentional) bar writers who are not wealthy, educated, or white from entry.
And while the Midwest is heavily white, Rust Belt poetry is still heavily leaning in to those Beat themes of being pro-proletariat, anti-fascist, anti-racist, and anti-cop. The spirit of the fight is alive and well in the Rust Belt, whereas it died in cities like New York, Portland, and Los Angeles way back in the 1980’s, if not before then. The Rust Belt literary scene is radically inclusive and huddles together on the side of the far left.
This is thoroughly refreshing in contrast to the buttoned-up, clean-cut image publishing houses like Simon & Schuester and Penguin Random House are trying to create. The Rust Belt makes its own small presses and publishes unheard voices. Rust Belt poets work two jobs, get their hands dirty, and still stay up till 3 am for post-reading shenanigans.
Midwestern post-industrial cities are housing the forefront of new American literature; creating a space for the “working man” to write and be heard, breaking down the barriers of the publishing industry, and allowing righteous, indignant anger and Beatedness to be the river they drink from.
About Jessi Quinn Alperin
Jessi Quinn Alperin (they/them) is a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. While there, they served as an editor for Forbes & Fifth for two years. Their poetry has been published by 70 Faces and Haunted Zine and they have also had a personal essay published in Twentyhood Magazine and two articles published for Environmental Health News. Jessi previously self-published a collection of poetry they had written between 2013-2017. They are currently a Social Justice Springboard Fellow for Oberlin College’s Hillel.