ON PAGE 27 of my
chapbook,
the adolescence of the cool, is the very short poem “we must learn to accept the implied without anger.” This poem was written around 1992–93 in response to another poet,
Tracie Hall. I suspect that she passed on the idea to me from an Angela Davis lecture given at UCSC during the last days of South African apartheid.
This statement could mean many things to many very important people. For me, this reminded me of the choice all people have to make when trying to survive in a success-oriented family: you can conform to the world defined by this family or you can choose to be “the authentic person” that might come in conflict with the family—and be willing to suffer the consequences.