Abuses in Poetry

Frictions

“Nothing about us without us.” That’s a guiding principle in the disability-rights movement. It applies to the mental-health justice and recovery movements as well because mental-health issues are often disabilities for those of us who live with them—sometimes because they are truly disabling and sometimes because our cultures disable us, our communities disable us, and those around us disable us because they don’t understand us (or try), don’t include us (or try), discriminate against us (often because of unexamined or dismissed bias), and subject us to their versions of who we are, which happens daily through language and actions and the way real and conceptual spaces are structured.

I bought a clicker, one of those old-fashioned ones that employees at the academic library where I worked in college used to track how many people came in each day. I’m going to use it for two weeks and track how many times I encounter instances of sanism, both in real life and on social media. I started doing something similar last week by making ticks on a piece of paper. But I like the idea of using a clicker in part because it’s an object I can hear and feel as I operate it, in part because it fits in my hand, and in part because it’s a bright color. I have the kind of sensory processing that appreciates those things. The clicker also feels more formal and official, and I can use it even when I don’t have a pen and paper with me, which makes it more practical. I may include notes about each instance, including the context, date, and time.

OK, I actually bought six clickers in an array of colors because they came in a set, but that’s beside the point. You may think that’s too many clickers. I don’t. I’m mildly tachycardic right now just thinking about their arrival. There’s a black one and a green one and a pink one and a red one and a white one and a yellow one. I’m actually trying to humanize myself in this paragraph and the last one because I made some big assertions in my opening paragraph, the kind that make people (in this case me) unlikable mostly because they fall under the information you didn’t ask for that I think you should know category but also because they may apply to you or those you know rather than some far-off “they” that we can all join in both hating and distancing ourselves from together.

“Nothing about us without us.” I take this principle seriously. It’s like no taxation without representation, only it’s like no characterization, no proclamations based on misinformation, no policy decisions, no representations in the arts and the media, no casual or formal conversations, no application of diagnostic labels especially when used in a pejorative manner, and no limited or completely erroneous lay insights without our representation. That means we are centralized, not marginalized. We are present, not absent. We are heard, not talked over, not silenced, not discounted. It means if we say there’s an issue, you listen. You don’t shift in your seat or put up a wall or fail to respond or shift blame to us. 

I’m no longer entering rooms where there are frictions only I appear to see and concerns only I appear to discern, one thousand frictions that are invisible to those who are not queer or neuroatypical or living with trauma or serious mental-health issues. That doesn’t mean those frictions don’t exist. It just means they may not exist for you, and if that’s the case, I’m happy for you. I’m glad a room is just a room is just a room. But your inability to see what others see, feel, and experience in those rooms—your failure to cultivate literacy about the things those who are oppressed and marginalized have to see in order to survive every day—is part of why rooms continue to not be the same rooms for you that they are for others.

These rooms are exhausting. Click click click (click click). If in addition to instances of sanism, I count instances of trans erasure (click), ableism (click), neurotypical bias (click), discounting of women and those who are female-bodied (click), jokes about diversity (or the lack thereof) in a space (click), and more,* there will be no end to the clicking in too many rooms, even rooms full of poets.

It’s impossible to know which rooms will be full of frictions. I’m trying to figure out what clues I can look for ahead of time and to develop a matrix I can use so I know when to call any given room quits. I no longer believe I can change hearts and minds with my presence, my words, or my work. I feel like, more than ever, I’m in a box called “crazy” and that terrifies people, no matter how I live, what I accomplish, how I treat others, or how wonderful folks think I am before they learn I have a DSM diagnostic label or that I’m queer or that I’m neuroatypical in numerous ways. I’ve seen that semipermeable membrane more times than I can count: the one where inclusion becomes exclusion and being part of becomes being removed from.

I feel like my attempts to address frictions only lead to more frictions, many of them in the form of irritation, denial, resentment, and even fear and disgust. But I will do what I can until I realize I can’t do any more. Then I’ll leave before I accept my own erasure and even start erasing myself. I can’t abide that or any other form of complicity.

I’ve mainly seen this level of friction in Utah. At least in other places, my experience has been that I become more human when I talk, when I write, when I take part in things. Of course, I was largely in the closet about my bipolar until two years ago. That may be part of why people accepted me as a human being and not as an amalgam of their stereotypes, biases, and misunderstandings about bipolar. Who knows what those places are like now, in this new world that has us all doing the work of marginalizing and dehumanizing others on some level.

The rooms with poets are the ones I must approach with care above all the others because I need to believe in poets, even if that belief is misguided. I’m not ready to let go of that yet. I know better. I think I know better. I want to know better but, more than that, I want to be wrong. I want to believe in poets the way some people want to believe in God. It’s like that for me.

I also can’t help but see something else in those rooms, wherever they’re located: a kind of arts-driven traveling medicine show meets multilevel marketing network. It’s not quite either of those things, but it does feel like a system that created itself and now uses its existence as a way of validating itself, one that enriches the few and relies on the many, and one that’s unhinged from actual oversight or governance by the institutions many of these poets actually work or once worked for, which means those institutions will not act based on anything that happens, up to and including sexual assault, in or near those rooms. It’s hard not to see it like that, especially after some of my personal experiences in such rooms, which makes it even harder to find spaces that are safe and poets who are doing good work in those spaces.

—

* I’m just listing ones I’ve encountered recently.

One (Sanist) Country for All

I emailed the organizer of the poetry event I was at and sent a letter to the faculty member whose comments concerned me. I don’t expect anyone to support me or even understand my concerns, but here’s the letter.

—

I’m deeply troubled by your comments yesterday about Ezra Pound at the [writing conference]. Many accounts support the fact that he had a psychotic disorder. Whether you believe that or not, your venom toward him and your characterizations about what a terrible person he was were emblematic of sanism. Your comment about the authorities not being able to put him in prison or kill him were incredibly painful given that they came on the heels of Fox news anchor Brian Kilmeade’s comments two weeks ago about those who are unhoused or who have mental-health issues needing to be killed, not to mention the July 24, 2025, Executive Order that trammels the rights of those who are unhoused, have mental-health issues, and have substance-use issues.

I stood up and took a risk by sharing my own mental-health issues with everyone at the conference in the context of helping those in my community overcome stigma about mental-health diagnostic labels and lived experience only to see you reinforce stigma and nearly seethe over someone who had a psychotic disorder. You undermined everything I tried to do, and you made that space unsafe for me and for those like me who are just trying to survive, which is especially hard to do here in Utah if you live with a mental-health label.

Your flippant comment about Pound being placed in an asylum (because he couldn’t be put in prison or killed) denies the reality of those institutions and the myriad harms they did to people in this country and all over the world. My mother worked in an asylum-turned-psychiatric hospital as a nurse. She was also subjected to great harm in similar hospitals as someone who lived with bipolar.

Those places are not a joke, should not be talked about lightly, and were the setting of, and justification for, countless human-rights abuses. This is the crux of my work as a poet and essayist: uncovering and documenting abuses that those with mental-health issues have experienced and continue to experience.

I was ashamed of myself yesterday, of my existence, as you spoke. Then I realized what I’m actually ashamed of is you: your attitude, your words, and your carelessness. Nothing you shared is why I paid the expenses associated with [the conference], why my husband took time off work to accompany me there, or what I hoped to learn during the event. If you hate Pound that much, you should have chosen a poem that wasn’t by him. Then the entire rant could have been avoided.

I’m nobody to someone like you, but I’m writing this to you anyway because I’m somebody to me, and I’m somebody to those I fight with and for. I will not stop speaking back to bigotry and hate, even when I encounter it in the unlikeliest of places.

—

I should mention the fact that, thanks to the July 24 Executive Order and its erosion of decades of protections for those it targets, it is now legal to hold anyone who’s affected by the order, including those with mental-health issues, in prison indefinitely. That’s yet another reason the faculty member’s comments are poorly timed and extremely insensitive.

—

In response to a comment on Facebook about this note, which was initially shared there: One of my concerns about Pound is that scholars who are not experts in psychiatry have tried to make the case that Pound either didn’t have a psychiatric issue or was feigning one. We aren’t in a position to make that determination, both because we aren’t there to assess him and because we don’t have the background that would allow us to do so.

The literature I’ve read that makes the case that Pound did not have psychosis doesn’t hold up and betrays more about the person doing the long-distance, time-traveling assessment than it does about what it’s like to have lived experience with mental-health issues or to have had them during a time when diagnoses, understandings, and treatments were rapidly changing.

Pound was in the asylum right before my mother had her own experiences both as a psychiatric nurse and as a psychiatric patient. There’s actual overlap there in terms of the dates. My mother’s diagnosis changed many times, as did her treatments, as did the degree to which she was affected by her psychosis.

Pound is challenging, difficult, and complicated. We can’t complicate him more by injecting one or more layers of sanism on top of his story. This was a class about concision in the poetic line. We weren’t there to study Pound or fascism or history or mental health. We weren’t. And to bring that into the conversation in a way that lacked skill and an understanding of what’s happening today in the United States to those who have mental-health issues, with a proposed resurgence of asylums and all, is alarming, heartbreaking, and soul-crushing, at least for me.

Just a couple of months ago, I saw a prominent poet get a whole group of poets riled up here on Facebook about another poet who was clearly experiencing psychosis. The pile-on was awful and included sanist labels, attitudes, and outright attacks. We need less of that kind of thing in the world and in the world of poetry, not more. I feel the way Pound was discussed two days ago promotes more of that kind of thing in the here and now, not less.

More Abuses in Poetry

I’m reflecting on how I could have stopped writing poetry at any of a number of points over the past year:

Last spring, when a poet I’d known for more than two decades went on his page and threatened me because he thought it was inappropriate for me to tell him that, as a friend, I loved him. He decided that meant we were having an affair. He attacked me privately, then went on his page to tell the entire poetry community he was going to out me as a married woman who was acting disgracefully. I had to watch women poets, including those I know, console him rather than telling him his behavior was inappropriate. That is the one and only time I’ve screenshot a Messenger conversation and shared it. I did so to put an end to the unfounded, untrue, and libelous comments he was making. He immediately blocked me. I never even said his name—though I would if something like that happened again today—and I removed the screenshots the next day rather than leaving them up as I could have.

Last winter, when a poet who’d been following my work for months and said he wanted to publish some of my poems left an obscenely hostile, sanist comment on one of my microessays lamenting the fact that people are using a bridge down the street to die by suicide. He screamed that I needed to be in therapy rather than writing and that my writing was the last thing he needed in his life, as if he hadn’t followed me and chosen to read, and laud, my work up to that point. As if he didn’t have the power to stop reading what I wrote or unfriend me or mute me or any of a suite of well-adjusted options that were available to him.

Two days ago, when a poet I’ve known for more than a year, perhaps the most successful and talented poet I know, lashed out at me for using the term sanism, indicating that I was “borrowing” the term, implying my experiences with abuse and trauma and my lived experience with bipolar aren’t valid because, unlike him, I haven’t been to war. It was not the first time he’d lashed out at me or the first time he’d engaged in disconcerting comments about and behavior toward women, namely women poets with mental-health diagnostic labels and lived experience.

That’s about one-third of what’s happened over the past year. Poets can be so toxic and vitriolic and othering and fragile and entitled and bullying—and even engage in nasty tactics like gaslighting—that it’s still hard for me to wrap my head around it. I am shocked every time it happens, though I shouldn’t be. Something similar but much worse is why I left poetry for years back in 2015.

Shame on those who engage in behaviors like this. Shame on the effect you’re having on other poets. Shame on the dynamics that underlie what you’re doing. Shame on you for doing everything seemingly in your power to remove folks like me from poetry in particular and the world in general. I mean the human world. I also mean the living world. Like everyone with a dignoastic label and lived experience with bipolar, I have a 1 in 5 chance of unaliving myself. Not trying to. Actually doing it. Anyone who nudges, pushes, or shoves another human being in that direction needs to sit with what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Bigtime.

I had just finished my essay for Mad in America the day before the poet accused me of appropriating the term sanism. What if I’d pulled that essay? What if I’d decided not to submit my manuscript to any more contests? What if I’d decided not to write poems or essays anymore? What if my mental-health recovery had been compromised?

Folks who need my writing would have lost my voice, including my insights, perspective, and stories. And I would have lost part of myself. That could have been what happened because poets like the ones listed above make poetry too much. Too hard. Too unwelcoming. Too dehumanizing. Too rancid. Because of the sexual assault that occurred with my mentor, which took me away from poetry and—in a sense—my life for seven long and lonely years, I am always close to leaving when some new poet rears his head in a similar way, with similar impulses and similar levels of dysfunction.

But I told myself when I came back that I will not leave. I will not budge. I will not back down. I will be a 4 in 5 even if certain men in poetry have absolutely no regard for my health, well-being, or life. That’s the biggest fuck you I can give men like that.

And I will write. I will not stop writing.

—

And those of you who know these types of folks and do nothing? Shame on you as well.

And those of you who think folks like me should shut up about things like this, who confuse us for the problem because we speak about the problem, who tell us to just get over it or at least not talk about it publicly? Shame on you, too.

I do not have the capacity for any of you. The work I’m doing is far more important than publishing poetry, that is if I have to stay silent about abuses in order to have work accepted or dissociatively participate in the system without being able to advocate for change within the system. I will not stay in the good graces of a toxic culture. This is about human rights. All of it. My life, my work, my purpose.

My Poems in Fence

This is the issue of Fence that my work appeared in back in 2001 just after I completed my undergraduate coursework. When I showed it to my first poetry teacher, he wouldn’t even look at my poem. He just said the journal wasn’t one he read or took seriously. I felt stupid for thinking my work had merit and that Fence was a credible publication. I didn’t submit work for seven years after that interaction with my teacher. I mostly didn’t write during that period, either. Matt Jasper calls this kind of thing wing clipping. This felt more like ripping my feathers out by their calami.

The issue I was in includes work by Bruce Andrews, Jorie Graham, Cate Marvin, and Adrienne Rich, among others. It’s astounding that anyone could look at the table of contents and respond the way my teacher did. Fence is one of the best literary journals out there. My teacher should have been celebrating me, not diminishing me.

Fence is currently open for submissions. Their reading period closes October 31, 2025.

Breaking Molds or Just Breaking

More notes on how and why I’m at an impasse with poetry. I’m amending my previous statement about my poetry and writing not being strong enough to continue with either. I think both are strong but that my poetry in particular is not aligned with what editors and publishers are looking for and that shaping my work so it’s better aligned with what contemporary editors want will destroy something fundamental in the work, in the process, and in my healing.

I don’t want to slot my poems into this or that mold. I don’t even want to be aware of what the molds are. Poetry is as much about breaking molds as honoring those that have a history of serving poems and their readers well, even if it’s just because familiar molds create one less barrier for the reader. But new molds do something for the reader as well, and for the poet. And barriers aren’t always a bad thing. Some of the most rewarding poems require thoughtful consideration on the part of the reader. New molds are important and shouldn’t be rejected because they’re unfamiliar. Not everything new is bad. Not every outsider poet has no idea what they’re doing.

The highly endogenous nature of poetry doesn’t always serve poetry well, as folks tend to gravitate to the names they know and the styles of poetry that sound a lot like the other poems they’ve been reading. How many voices are being missed? My guess is a lot.

I think poetry has moved in some disconcerting directions in the past few years in terms of what’s allowed and what’s not allowed, which extends to which voices are included and which are excluded. I’m not down with any of that. I’m down to write — and to write from my embodied self as it relates to the world. I don’t want to see my work altered to the point of being unrecognizable so that it can get published. What use do I have for a poem that doesn’t look or feel like me anymore? I don’t want to see my work or my life or my mother’s life gutted for the sake of having an easier or more palatable or less complicated poem or understanding of the world or understadning of things like psychosis.

I also recognize that if I had more talent or if my poems were challenging in the right ways (whatever that means), there would have been some evidence of it by now. That evidence doesn’t exist. As I move into my mid-50s, I have to consider what I’ve invested in poetry over the past three decades and whether I can continue to invest in it. Workshop fees, contest fees, manuscript reviews, submission fees, and more add up, as does traveling to read my work, assuming I could even get an invitation to read anywhere. I don’t have the time, energy, or health to keep up with the financial and other demands of poetry, all while waiting years for something, anything, to happen.

Then there’s the sexual assault I’ve talked about more than some of you might like. That experience in itself was awful, but worse, perhaps, was the poetry community’s response years later when information about that poet came to light from several sources. Hundreds of poets were involved in discounting the poet’s actions and claiming he couldn’t have done what he was accused of doing. By that I mean: hundreds of poets I respected up until that collective public outburst were involved in discounting the poet’s actions and claiming he couldn’t have done what he was accused of doing.

This is what I mean when I say pathology is systemic. In this case, it wasn’t just one poet doing harm. It was many, including editors and publishers, the very people I won’t placate now with easy-to-slot work that doesn’t raise anyone’s hackles or that only raises certain hackles the right way (again, whatever that means). There are too many of these poets to avoid. They live in every part of the country, teach at numerous institutions, and have published with just about every publisher out there. I remember what they said. It’s triggering to see their names throughout the day when someone brings one of them up or quotes their work or drops their name into a group chat I’m in.

When I crept back to poetry cautiously in 2022, I thought things would be better. They aren’t. The kinds of things that happened to me are continuing to happen to other poets. Poets are still largely silent about everything that happens in poetry and protective of those who create and sustain systems that lead to inappropriate exertions of power.

Navigating all this is weighing heavily on me. I told myself in 2022 that I’d go as far as I could go in poetry and that I’d stop if it became clear I needed to. I would just stop. I said this to myself as if it would be simple, stopping. It isn’t. Continuing isn’t simple, either.

I’ll leave comments open on this post, but I reserve the right to delete any responses that miss the mark. I hope it’s clear this isn’t a simple situation with easy answers.

What Happened

Sexual violations can take time to understand, to come into our consciousness. What is was. What it’s called. Knowing what happened, knowing the name of what happened, can lead to a whole other level of distress that needs attention and healing. Even though nothing about the experience changes, knowing what it is, what a violation it is, changes everything.

I grew up being so violated I didn’t have names for anything. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I really started to understand. I was watching a news story that included the details of a woman’s rape by multiple classmates. I was like, That’s rape? I’d been in a nearly identical situation once with two older classmates, which meant I was raped. That’s the first time I realized what happened, what it was.

Then I went through a list of other incidents in my head and was like, Then what was this, and what was this, and what was this? It turns out it was a combination of rapes and sexual assaults. Also child sex abuse. Also, much later, in 2023, I realized I’d been trafficked. I’d just learned that there was a huge sex-trafficking ring in my hometown and in other parts of the state my father frequented with me. It’s one of the largest in the country. I don’t know that my father was formally part of that or if he just found his way into those spaces because he was drawn to them. But I do know he sexually abused me. And his best friend sexually abused me. And his best friend’s adult son was extremely inappropriate with me in a sexual/grooming way. And his work associate came around the house with his penis sticking out of his short shorts while I was told to sit on the ground in front of him, putting me at eye level with it, while my dad was there watching both of us. And I know that man was also sexually abusing his children. And my father’s former friend was sexually abusing his daughter. And I was in that house a lot, all the time, and it never felt safe there, and it wasn’t because he was hitting her or throwing her down the stairs. It was another kind of unsafe, one she wouldn’t be able to talk about until she was in her fifties.

And I know my father made me talk to truckers on the biggest sex-trafficking highway in Oklahoma. I know I had a CB radio handle. I know the truckers knew the handle. I know they would get on the CB radio and ask for my father by his handle, then ask if I was there and if they could talk to me. And I know I obliged. And I know I thought it was fun. I believe I was on my father’s lap some of the time, but that may just be how it felt emotionally—that closeness and tension. And I know my father stopped once, with me, to meet up with a man who saw me and looked scared and wanted to leave. That’s where what I know ends. I don’t remember the rest.

When I learned that there was a name for all of that and the name was child sex trafficking and abuse, it was too much of a shift, though nothing that happened had changed. What it was had changed. I spent parts of 2023 delusional and terrified. I felt like I’d come to understand something the human mind isn’t meant to understand and that I’d survived something the human body isn’t meant to survive.

So yeah. Maybe fuck [poet’s name redacted] or at least that comment she made and the similar ones other folks made in 2015. What happened with the poet who harmed me was nothing compared with what my own family and namely my father did to me and allowed to be done to me. But it was still sexual assault, and it was still fucking awful, especially because the poet made me talk about my child sexual abuse as he was assaulting me. It turned him on.

—

This post was initially a response to a comment on another post on my Facebook page.

Quiet, Dearies

Perhaps the stupid little twat coterie need to be sent to bed without their suppers? Quiet, dearies, adults are talking. Definitions have become so blurred and a no-accountability and unassailable victimhood is now the norm. According to today’s definitions of rape I have been raped hundreds of times. — [Poet’s Name Redacted]

—

This is one of the worst things that was said in 2015 in response to the public discussion about the poet who harmed me and, according to others, harmed them as well. There were hundreds and hundreds of comments like this over a period of weeks that stretched into months that felt like an eternity.

Look at the language [the poet] chooses to use. Look at the infantilization of victims. Look at the complete dismissal of any/all accounts regarding this poet’s behavior.

This comment has stuck with me for a decade. It is not acceptable. It was made publicly and loudly by a female minority poet whose work focuses on the way the self is divided by differing identities. That is, by someone insightful enough to have known better than to say something this heartless and atrocious.

This poet has served as a poet laureate, has numerous collections, has won awards, and has published in the top literary journals. She was never called out for making this statement. What this tells me is that these abuses are endemic in poetry. They are unavoidable. More than that, they are allowed. I can’t look away from the elephant in the room: It’s poets like this and the institutions and entities that support them.

Part of me wishes [this poet] the best and hopes she’s rethought this thought because it’s certainly not her best thought. But another part still feels the damage from this comment and others like it, all these years later. It feels like a grenade went off and I was on top of it. My guess is I’m not the only one who felt that way reading her words.

The Writing Life. Parting Words.

I wrote the essay below years ago for a literary organization that ran a series whose focus was on discussing poets whose behavior is inappropriate in an attempt to raise awareness and make poetry spaces safer. The series was also designed to encourage those who’d been harmed to tell their stories. The night before I was going to submit it, someone approached the editor who was handling my submission and told them the name of the poet I was talking about. When I agreed to submit the essay, it was on the condition that the subject not be named or identified. The divulgence made publishing the piece more complicated.

At about the same time, I was made aware of the letter that poet was circulating about me that made libelous statements, as detailed in a previous post. There were also feverish attacks coming from every direction on social media and in private online poetry spaces. One prominent female poet called sexual assault and rape as a whole into question, writing: Definitions have become so blurred and a no-accountability and unassailable victimhood is now the norm. According to today’s definitions of rape I have been raped hundreds of times.

That same poet also called anyone who’d been a victim or was advocating for victims part of a stupid little twat coterie, adding that they need to be sent to bed without their suppers. The fact that she writes for a major publication now brings me no comfort. Someone else used the phrase loathsome creatures to describe victims and advocates. Another called them evil. (That one got hundreds of likes from fellow poets.) Yet another said their efforts felt gratuitous, as if the women were taking pleasure in their pain.

I knew a lot of the poets who were making these kinds of statements. They were editors, publishers, friends, even some of my poetry heroes. Though I wasn’t talking publicly about what had happened to me, and I wasn’t part of the group or groups who were doing so, those attacks were on us all. Every one of us.

I couldn’t see how my essay would have helped at that point. I was unable to tell my story before the chance to do so evaporated. I don’t know what difference it will make now, but I want to share it so I can start to be freed from a horrific experience that began more than a decade ago and affects me to this day.

The last section, “Part 4: The Day You Are Reading This,” was designed for a publication date of more than a decade ago. But it’s still pretty spot on. There’s a timelessness to all of this: both to these kinds of abuses and how these kinds of abuses affect people.

—

The Writing Life: Parting Words

Part 1. Date Withheld

We are in the hotel where a writing conference is taking place, in a restaurant just inside the registration area. Hundreds of poets and writers flit back and forth like gnats. All dutifully wear their conference IDs on lanyards, all carry satchels, backpacks, and bags stuffed with books. They are on their way to and from panels, readings, the book fair, and the public restrooms, some of which have lines that extend all the way down one hall and into another.

He has chosen a seat in the most visible section of the restaurant, an open space near the intersection of two highly trafficked hallways, as opposed to a spot tucked deeper inside the venue. I feel he has selected this spot for a reason. For the entire event, he seems to have choreographed who he will be seen with—and when, where, and how he will be seen with those people. Being “seen” with him seems to be his way of introducing me, of making the statement that I am of some, however modest, worth.

He even orchestrates who he will walk to readings with. I learn this the hard way when, one night before a reading, it becomes apparent that my friend N and I are not allowed to walk with him the two or so blocks from the conference hotel to the reading venue. I realize this when trying to make eye contact with him over and over as he and a clutch of women stand at a small bar just inside the hotel’s entrance. I wave. I make more eye contact. But N and I are both ignored, my gestures shut down.

N and I walk within six feet of his group from the lobby to the reading, but it is clear we’re not walking with his party. Once we all get to the event, however, he makes a point of coming over to talk to me. He stands in front of me, his relative height a statement in a room full of seated poets. He touches me on the arms and shoulders. He asks for a hug. He leaves for a while then comes back, repeating the entire set of requests and gestures. This happens three times.

This is just a gesture, I think. It’s only a gesture. Maybe this is the way things work at this conference—new people make their way “in” based on how others seem to fawn over them. I’ve never attended this conference before, so I wouldn’t know its politics or social dynamics, though there do seem to be many of both in play, with overlap between the two.

At lunch, he tells me how much he loves my poetry and my thoughts about poetry. I go into detail about the panel N and I just came from, where the conversation turned to the notion of “doing violence” to a poem. One panelist’s points during that discussion are of particular interest to me, including his assertion that all acts of writing are violent, that language is intrinsically violent. Another panelist rejects this idea and feels more than uneasy with it. Why all this talk about violence, she asks the audience.

We have been in contact for several months, since I posted a note on Facebook saying I was looking for a poetry mentor. He works at a respected university and takes on many students to mentor, he tells me when he responds to my query.

The conversation pivots from how much he likes my poetry to how much he likes me. I really like you, Dana. I really, really like you.

He leans in and asks, Is N— in love with you, as he reaches out to hold my hand.

Part 2. Date Withheld

I am on my way to the first residency of my master of fine arts program. Because of the program’s check-in time, I had to fly down the night before. The poetry mentor I met through Facebook and with whom I have been interacting for months lives near where I am headed. He has offered to pick me up and drive me from the airport to the destination. He has also suggested we get two rooms at a hotel near the airport. That would give us some time to hang out and talk about poetry, he said. He could then drive me to the residency the next morning. He knew I had anxiety about traveling and being separated from my husband. He said he wanted to support me so I could focus on the residency without having to worry about the logistics of getting there.

His gesture seemed genuine. I talked it over with my husband and agreed to take the mentor up on his offer. He made the arrangements with the hotel and insisted on putting the rooms on his card, saying his school would reimburse him because he would be making an appearance at the residency, which is a form of promotion for his school’s program.

As my mentor and I stand at the hotel’s registration desk the night before the residency, the attendant only hands us key cards for one room, not two. Because of a flight delay, we are checking in several hours later than expected. It’s too late to get another room; they have all been booked for the night.

I’ve already taken one milligram of Ativan to sleep, and it’s starting to kick in. I am confused as we make our way down the long hall to the room. We had talked after the writing conference. I had explicitly stated that I was not interested in any kind of sexual relationship with him. He assured me that he didn’t mean his comment about “really, really” liking me the way it had come across. He was just trying to express how much he liked me as a person and as a friend.

In the following months, he gained my trust as a mentor. He presented himself as looking out for my best interests as a poet. The fact that he was a poetry editor and taught alongside esteemed poets in a creative writing program—as well as his assertion that he was especially interested in supporting the work of women poets because we face so many hurdles within the literary community—further deepened my trust in him.

He also earned my trust on a personal level. Once, when we were discussing my poetry, he said he saw evidence of sexual abuse in the subject matter. He shared that he, too, had been abused. That divulgence, coupled with the concern he showed surrounding my abuse, solidified my trust in him. I was speaking with a fellow survivor, after all, someone who was expressing a depth of concern for my suffering that few have shown. There was no way he would take advantage of my trust. What fellow abuse survivor would even consider doing such a thing?

The fact that he is an abuse survivor informs my thinking as we make our way to the room. I am trying to see the situation from his perspective, as a fellow survivor who feels he’s bonded with me in a way that makes sharing a room with two beds acceptable, like a slumber party between girlfriends. He has a very asexual, childish way about him, and there is a playful energy between us. Nothing in his behavior indicates he has a sexual interest in me. Over the past few months, I have wondered if he had a sexual interest in women at all. I don’t want to jump to conclusions that might be unfounded. I both trust him and want to trust him.

I tell myself, He’s not doing this. He’s not doing this. He’s my mentor. He’s my friend. I must be misreading this. Could he really be doing this?

I am still picking up on zero sexual energy as we settle into the room. He places all his belongings on his own bed, not the one I will be sleeping in. I am continuing to get more of a slumber party vibe than anything, which is in keeping with his overall childlike energy. I try to write the situation off as his having confusion over the boundaries of our friendship more than anything else. At the same time, my body is telling me a different story. Panic is setting in because I have so many sexual violations in my past. Bedroom spaces are particularly anxiety-provoking. It is difficult for me to sleep in anyone else’s presence, even those I trust.

I step out of the room and call my husband, explaining that it is one room, not two. He is shocked. I tell him that I think it is all OK, that I don’t believe there is anything underhanded going on, and that it feels more like a sleepover than him intentionally overstepping his bounds. My husband asks if I feel safe. I say that I do. I get off the phone and go back into the room, thinking, It’s just one night. Just get through this. You can do it. Everything is fine.

I take another milligram of Ativan, both for my nerves and because I need to make sure I get as much rest as possible to be ready for the next day’s residency. I make sure he knows I have taken two doses of the medicine and that is for sleep. Still not fully aware of the danger I am in—still both trusting him and wanting to trust him—my logic is that he definitely won’t try anything if he knows I am incapacitated. And I am. Two milligrams of Ativan is a sedating dose. The medicine suppresses the central nervous system so anxiety can be overridden and sleep can be induced.

I lie down on my bed. The sedating effects from the first and second doses of the medicine are underway. He asks me questions about my physical and sexual abuse. This seems like a strange topic to bring up at this time, when I am stressed and tired and have said repeatedly that I just want to sleep. Why would I want to explore this territory after I’ve had a very hard and long trip, when I have taken a sedative, and when I need to get some rest for the upcoming residency?

I can’t remember what all he asked and what all I said. My memories of conversations are usually quite clear, but the medicine was functioning as a kind of blur filter. I know he was asking for details about what was done to me and how it made me feel. I know the line of inquiry was invasive. He was asking for too many specifics, almost like he wanted to trigger me into reliving the experiences of abuse. The timing and context felt off. Something else was starting to feel very, very off—not about his questions but about him as a person, his intentions. I was beginning to realize the potential danger I was in.

He asks if he can rub my feet. OK, I say, afraid to say otherwise. At this point, I am trying to think clearly, trying to not pass out despite the sedative in my system, trying to imagine how I am going to get out of this unscathed, and—still—trying to tell myself this can’t really be happening. My “OK” is designed to buy me the time needed to figure out, through the haze, what is going on and how to deal with it. (And to be clear, because of my incapacitation, my “OK” was not effective consent. It also did not justify what he did next or the deception and breach of trust that got me into that room in the first place.)

Everything is getting hazier. I think, There’s no way he’s making some kind of move on me—especially not while he’s asking me to tell him about my sexual abuse. That would be really, really twisted.

He continues to ask about my abuse as he starts making his way up my legs. With a jolt, I suddenly know beyond a doubt what he’s doing. I am scared, terrified. I am paralyzed—both physically because of the medicine and mentally/emotionally. The fear associated with my previous sexual abuse kicks in. When I was molested, I did the same thing: I froze. When I was sexually assaulted as a child by an older child: I froze. When I was raped in high school: I froze. Freezing is related to the fight-or-flight response. It is a third form of automatic response the body can have during a traumatic experience. Because of my previous experiences, because I am isolated in a strange town and in a strange room with this man, and because I am incapacitated by the sedative I have taken, freezing is all my body can do, so that’s what it does.

He keeps moving his hands higher. He is touching my inner thigh. It becomes clear with a shock what he’s doing as his hand grazes my vulva through the long underwear I had put on in an attempt to sleep fully covered up. Overriding the sedative, adrenaline rushes through my body. I am still scared to confront him directly, to call him on what he’s up to. I tell him to stop.

I need to sleep, I need to sleep. I bat him away.

Do you need someone to hold you, he asks.

No, I say.

Are you sure, he says.

Yes, I say.

Where do you want me to sleep, he asks in his cloying, childlike tone.

Over there, I say.

Not here, he asks.

No, I say.

He pushes: Are you sure you don’t need someone to cuddle with.

No, I don’t I insist.

He gets up reluctantly. As he moves to get into his bed, I can see through his clothing that he has an erection. I think he was rubbing my legs with it at one point instead of using his hands.

I lie there stunned. I can’t fall asleep even with the medicine in my system, and I don’t want to. If I do, who knows what might happen. I lie awake, running on adrenaline and resisting the medicine’s effects, until I hear him snoring. As quietly as I can, I get up and attempt to pull pants on over my long underwear so I can sneak out of the room. I stumble, nearly fall. This wakes him up. I tell him I am going to stay in the lobby or that I’ll find another hotel (not that I have a way to get there). I say that I am not comfortable and can’t sleep with him in the same room. He apologizes and says he’ll go sleep in his car. I tell him not to come back. He says he won’t. He leaves the room. I pass out in my bed.

I feel safe, finally. I don’t yet have words for what I have just experienced and won’t for a long time. Phrases like “nonconsensual sexual touching” and “effective consent” are not running through my head that night. What is running through my head is a single thought: At least he didn’t rape me. That is the kind of logic many survivors of rape and child sexual abuse employ when someone revictimizes them in ways that fall short of outright rape. At least he only did x and not y is our way of creating a sense of empowerment and protection in the moment and not allowing the person who has hurt us to strip us of who we are. We feel that as long as it could have been worse, we can still move forward. We can become whole again, or at least we can live with the hope of becoming whole.

About four hours later, I wake up to my alarm. He is back in the room, asleep in his bed. I didn’t hear him come in. I have no idea how long he’s been there. I have no idea what he might have done while I was passed out. My sense—or at least my hope—is that he did nothing. But in reality, I know he’s already done something, even if he did “nothing” when he violated yet another boundary by returning to the room despite my insisting he not do so.

He takes me to my residency the next day. I am still in shock and still processing what has happened as he visits with other poets, lingering for hours before finally leaving the campus. He shakes their hands. He talks to them at length. I am too scared to say anything to any of them and wouldn’t know what to say anyway. They have a relationship with him. They don’t have a relationship with me. He is somebody in poetry. I am nobody. I continue to operate in survival mode, counting down the minutes until he will leave me alone at the residency, all without letting on to anyone that something is amiss.

Part 3. Date Withheld

The day after the mentor drops me off at my residency, he sends me an email. I really, really like you, he writes. He asks if we can take our relationship in a different direction, into the area of physical exploration and play.

Later, I will look at a book he signed for me the day before. In the inscription, he will say that I no longer need a mentor. It appears he’s decided that I do need a lover, and that he should be that lover, no matter what my feelings happen to be on the matter.

It will be months before I tell anyone what happened in that hotel room.

Part 4. The Date You Are Reading This

This poet’s actions had numerous short- and long-term consequences. First, they derailed my poetry studies. I had to take sedatives the entire time I was at that residency and bawled through half my time there, especially after problems cropped up in the program around issues related to racism, sexism, homophobia, and transgender discrimination. I barely made it through the first semester both because my mentor in the program was good friends with the poet and because the program’s director lowered my grade for the residency, stating that I did not “demonstrate a passionate commitment to writing.” At the residency, the director privately scolded me for arriving at the program with the poet, purportedly in order to flaunt him in front of my fellow classmates. That statement could not have been more damaging to me, or further from the truth.

Second, the poet’s actions hindered my ability to promote my own work. I was limited in terms of who I could approach and who I could trust. I was also afraid to reach out only to have another poet take advantage of me. I sent my work out infrequently. I didn’t pursue prizes and awards in case he knew or was connected to the judges. The list of ways I turned inward and did not actively and consistently promote my work goes on and on.

Third, the poet’s actions limited my participation in the broader poetry community. What he did—and the way I felt obligated to hide what he did out of fear, shame, and the belief that my concerns would be written off or, worse, that I would be told I was lying—has haunted me for years. I’ve passed the half decade mark at this point, and I still have trouble finding a way to move forward in poetry. I have met several poets who are deeply entwined with this man. I have been triggered in my community when he’s come to town to read. I have been invited to take part in safe, empowering groups of women poets, only to hear them mention this man as if he really is selflessly and genuinely promoting the work of women poets. I have tried to share space with him on social media, even though doing so never felt safe. (At one point, when I unblocked him recently, I saw that he was connected to more than a quarter of my connections on Facebook.) When my work is published in a literary journal, I check the table of contents first thing to make sure his name isn’t listed alongside mine.

In short, there is a hole blown through me, one only I can see. I carry that hole everywhere. It is impossible to be whole in the presence of that hole.

I’ve heard too many stories like mine to remain silent, including additional stories about this particular poet. I am still trying to find a path that will allow me to move forward in poetry. I am listening to the voices that have gone before me. I am being more careful than ever about who I associate with and who I trust. I am putting words to my experience and, regardless of the consequences, I am saying, This happened. This is wrong. It has to stop happening. This is about me, but it isn’t just about me. The issues in play in my story—power, manipulation, deceit, transgression, and the sexual assault that rose out of those issues—are central to other victims’ stories. My hope is to join the voices that are already calling for an end to the systematic subjugation, objectification, exploitation, and manipulation of women who want to be part of poetry. My hope is for stories like mine to be a thing of the past, not par for the course. I want all of this to end.

The Letter

Several years ago, the poet who sexually assaulted me circulated a letter about me within the poetry community. In it, he made defamatory statements about me, including stating that I was expelled from my MFA program for behavioral health issues. That’s not the case. I withdrew after my first semester of study. It was too difficult to continue there because the sexual assault happened en route to that program’s first residency, the poet who assaulted me was friends with instructors there, and the director lowered my grade for the residency, calling into question my commitment to poetry.

That letter was terrifying. I’d just been diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening disease that affects my immune system. I had thyrotoxicosis, which is also a serious medical condition. And I had follicular thyroid cancer. The letter was circulating among poets when I was too ill to defend myself. It was me against everyone who adored him and believed him and had already been online making statements about victims being spineless or taking pleasure in our own pain. The poet who assaulted me successfully silenced me by lying about me, intimidating me, publicly shaming me, and using my trauma history against me, one he knew well and used as a way to connect with me and earn my trust.

It was too much for me to withstand, so I stopped writing and buried most of myself to salvage whatever remnants I could in an effort to create some kind of life outside poetry. Birding helped me get through it. Weaving helped, too. But when I had a suite of serious medical issues in 2022 followed by serious mental-health issues in 2023, I knew I needed words again. I needed poetry, so I started writing, and I slowly began to connect and reconnect with other poets, even knowing that doing so could lead me back into pain, into misunderstandings, into being labeled and shunned, into being formally and informally blacklisted and, perhaps, right into the arms of cruelty.

If anyone has any concerns or hears any murmurings about me, I hope they’ll talk to me directly and not make assumptions about me based on defamatory, inaccurate, incomplete, or decontextualized information. I’m terrified all over again because my work is appearing in literary journals, and I’m bracing for attacks. That’s why I’m writing this: not to set any record straight, but rather to make my fear transparent, as well as my genuine desire to respond to anything folks may have heard about me.

Five Things Addendum

I want to add to my November 16 post about five things that have happened to me as a female-bodied poet. Poets #1 and #4 are misogynists. Poet #5 is deeply disturbed. But poets #2 and #3 live in a different space.

They’re both sensitive, talented male poets. They embody poetry in ways few do these days. There’s a kindness to them that’s rare, a generosity that can feel unparalleled. But they struggle in different ways, perhaps not unlike the ways in which we all struggle. Those struggles may be part of why poetry is so important to them and why they need it to be central to their lives.

I get it. But when those struggles have a gendered component, that dynamic can draw some poets closer while leading others to be excluded, marginalized, and othered. That othering tends to happen more to female-bodied poets than to non-female-bodied poets.

A female-bodied poet’s kindness can be taken for something it isn’t. A male poet’s expectations can get in the way of reality. A poet who feels snubbed or hurt or like he’s the one who never gets the girl can cut all ties to a talented female-bodied poet in order to avoid those feelings without thinking about the consequences of doing so, let alone the role they’re playing alongside countless other male poets, which is removing support from, blocking opportunities for, and silencing that poet’s voice and personhood over and over during her/their writing career.

That’s why I included poets #2 and #3 in my list alongside two misogynists and a poet who sexually assaulted me. They may be different from those men, but they still did harm. And this body keeps the score, which means other bodies are also keeping the score. It’s time to talk about the damage being done to our work and to our physical and mental health.