Rivalry

What interests me about rivalry is the community that must exist to support it. Community exists on many levels. In family a rivalry can exists between two siblings, between parents, between cousins. Small towns and big cities have sports team rivalries. I suppose these are the two common kinds of rivalry, though technically a rivalry is simply a competition for the same objective or for superiority in a field (according to google define, anyway).

What makes a rivalry noteworthy is the spectator. To properly fuel a rivalry the spectator has to be a member of the community that is shared by the competitors. The competitors have to care about the spectator, perhaps this is way family rivalries are so vehement. The spectator should feel as if the well-being of the community rests on the outcome of the rivalry being in their favor. This is more common in sports rivalry, because in family rivalry there will not be a “spectator” in the way I mean it. Though family a rivalry can spread to immediate family, extended family, to the local community and beyond.

This is probably a modern interpretation of rivalry, highlighting the competition, the performance aspect of obtaining a goal or proving dominance.

 

In poetry, the one clear area of competition is the slam. I tried this for about a year. It was my entrance into poetry. I competed in a regional slam and was placed on the national team as an alternate. Basically, I went to watch, to be a spectator. The nature of slam creates rivalry. There is community amongst teammates, spectators within those community, and judges who evaluate superiority.

I moved away from that. Still I think that as we seek to publish and reach people with our poetry, competition is inevitable. There are, after all, contests for individual poems, chapbooks, full-length books.

What I like about the non-slam, local community I live in is our attempt to overcome rivalry. We are all seeking the same goal, in the same field, trying to be our best, but we aren’t seeking superiority over each other. In fact, the opposite may be the case, we are trying to advance each other to understand and cope with our own inferiority.