Laurence Musgrove

There’s only one reason I’m here: I’m here to make friends.

 Austin Kleon

Some 2500 years ago in Northern India, there was a wealthy merchant and banker by the name of Sudatta. Sudatta encountered Gautama Buddha on a business trip, and upon hearing him deliver one of his teachings, Sudatta experienced a transformative awakening and became one of the greatest benefactors and patrons of Gautama Buddha and his monks.

Thereafter known as Anathapindika or “the one who gives alms to the unprotected,” Sudatta dedicated his wealth to building one of the most well-known Buddhist monasteries. Located in Jeta’s Grove or “Jetavana,” this monastery is where Gautama Buddha delivered many of his most important teachings available to us today, including one titled “Sambodhi Sutta.” Therein, Gautama Buddha defines the eight conditions or wings that lead to self-awakening or enlightenment.

The following excerpt lists the first of these conditions: friends.

… the Blessed One was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anathapindika’s monastery. There he said to the monks: “Monks, if wanderers who are members of other sects should ask you, ‘What, friend, are the prerequisites for the development of the wings to self-awakening? How would you answer them?”

“For us, lord, the teachings have the Blessed One as their root, their guide, & their arbitrator. It would be good if the Blessed One himself would explicate the meaning of this statement. Having heard it from the Blessed One, the monks will remember it.”

“In that case, monks, listen & pay close attention. I will speak.”

“As you say, lord,” the monks responded to him.

The Blessed One said, “If wanderers who are members of other sects should ask you, ‘What, friend, are the prerequisites for the development of the wings to self-awakening?’ you should answer, ‘There is the case where a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & colleagues. This is the first prerequisite for the development of the wings to self-awakening.

Some 13 years ago when I returned to Texas to become English Department Chair at Angelo State University, I had no friendships, companions, or colleagues in the Texas creative writing community. Soon thereafter, however, my colleague Terry Dalrymple encouraged me to submit proposals to Langdon Review Weekend and the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers (TACWT). 

Terry also introduced me to his friend Jerry Craven, who has been an admirable friend, companion, and colleague to many Texas writers. Some 10 years later, I’ve had four books published by Lamar University Literary Press (LULP): three original collections and one anthology Texas Weather co-edited with Terry.

It’s not a stretch for me to see these two friendships and others I’ve made along the way as the wings to my self-awakening as a poet and editor. These friends also include Moumin Quazi and Marilyn Robitaille, Langdon Review Weekend organizers and co-editors of Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas.  

I’ve also received the generosity of others who’ve published my work, such as Jim LaVilla-Havelin, Octavio Quintanilla, Robin Carstensen, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Katherine Hoerth, also at LULP, who took such good editorial care of my latest collection The Bluebonnet Sutras. Another good colleague at Angelo State, poet Chris Ellery has been a constant inspiration. Chris also introduced me to Ken Hada and the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival in Ada, Oklahoma. 

Plus, at Angelo State, I’ve been fortunate to participate in our annual writers' conference, where I’ve had the chance to host and make new friends, like Alan Berecka, Jan Seale, Karla Morton, Alan Birkelbach, Jim Sanderson, Matthew Pitt, Nathaniel O’Reilly, Carol Coffee Reposa, Juan Manuel Pérez, and Andrew Geyer.

More recently, again through the generosity of Terry and Jerry, I’ve edited two volumes of Writing Texas, the conference proceedings of TACWT. And it has been through this organization that I gained new friends Lyman Grant, Dan Williams, Steve Sherwood, Loretta Diane Walker, Clay Reynolds, and Jerry Bradley.

This wealth of generous Texas companions has also served as the inspiration for three no-fee submission, online journal projects, TEJASCOVIDO, Texas Poetry Ballots, and most recently, Texas Poetry Assignment. 

TEJASCOVIDO grew out of my desire in March 2020 to stay in touch with my many new friends, and to keep them connected to each other during the early lockdown days and weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. TEJASCOVIDO eventually published more than 150 pieces by close to 100 writers and artists: more new friends, like Jesse Doiron, Chuck Etheridge, Vincent Hostak, Kathryn Jones, Sumera Saleem, Jeffrey L. Taylor, Seth Wieck, and Antoinette F. Winstead.

TEJASCOVIDO culminated in the publication of a special edition of Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas in September 2020 that I coedited with Moumin and Marilyn. It featured 30 selections from the project, plus work from Texas Poet Laureate Emmy Perez, as well as photographs of selected writers and introductory pieces by each on how they were surviving the pandemic. 

Next, Texas Poetry Ballots (TPB) was created in response to the 2020 presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I asked writers to compose poems they would wish to include with their ballots. TPB eventually published 41 of these poems by 33 writers. 

Once these two projects had completed their run, I began to think about how to maintain these friendships. It was my wife, Marie-Clare, who suggested I create a more general online journal and post a variety of assignments. I also had in mind a project that might generate friendship through a combination of social activism and creative expression.

Here is an excerpt from the TPA “Editorial Philosophy and Aims” meant to show how these two paths can lead to community.

To inspire community through hunger relief, TPA has established opportunities to recognize our responsibilities to those who needlessly suffer from food insecurity, specifically through donations to Feeding Texas, the largest hunger-relief organization in Texas. Together with twenty-one food banks, they reach over four million Texans annually with food and resources, and they engage the state in the fight against hunger.

To inspire community through poetry, TPA has established a series of assignments and online readings to demonstrate how poetry might be grounded in specific moral assumptions about the nature of human behavior and relationship. 

These assumptions begin with the belief that all people desire and deserve freedom from suffering, both for themselves and in their relationships with others. Freedom in this sense is a mutually-dependent and mutually-beneficial learned activity that aims at the reduction of suffering and the enjoyment of improved relationships with others.

Thus, TPA began in 2021 with its first assignment “Inaugural Poems” to commemorate Biden’s inaugural. It was very soon followed by a second assignment “1/6/21 Poems” on the invasion of the United States Capitol Building by Trump’s deluded “Stop the Steal” mob. 

These assignments were followed in 2021 by 14 more assignments and twelve monthly online readings. These readings, held on Sunday nights over Zoom and Google Meet, featured TPA poets reading their work and special book release events for newly published volumes of poetry by TPA contributors.

During that first year, TPA published 209 poems by 52 poets. I also established new friendships with Fernando Esteban Flores, Chip Dameron, Milton Jordan, Betsy Joseph, Melanie Alberts, Thomas Quitzau, Sarah Lenz, and many others. My new friendship with Milton also resulted in his suggestion that we create an anthology of poems from the first year of TPA.

This new book project began in early 2022 with the selection of several contributing co-editors and an agreement with Tony Burnett at Kallisto Gaia Press to publish in early 2023 Lone Star Poetry: Championing Texas Verse, Community, and Hunger Relief. This volume is slated to include 90 poems by 42 poets responding to the 16 TPA assignments of 2021. A portion of the net profits will be donated to Feeding Texas.

One of my favorite writers on the nature of creativity is Lewis Hyde. In The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, he distinguishes “art-as-commodity” from “art-as-gift-giving.” Art-as-commodity is a celebration of the individual, hoarding, and the marketplace of winners and losers. Art-as-gift-giving is a celebration of the community, sharing, and the spirit of creativity that must circulate freely between us to survive. Describing this “gift community,” he writes

If we take the synthetic power of gifts, which establish and maintain the bonds of affection between friends, lovers, and comrades, and if we add to these a circulation wider than a binary give-and-take, we shall soon derive society, or at least those societies—family, guild, fraternity, sorority, band, community—that cohere through faithfulness and gratitude. While gifts are marked by motion and momentum at the level of the individual, gift exchange at the level of the group offers equilibrium and coherence, a kind of anarchist stability. 96-97

Almost every day for the last two years, I’ve opened my email to find another gift from a new friend or old in response to a TPA poetry assignment. Each assignment is a simple gift I circulate freely to more than 100 poets in Texas and beyond.  

The assignment says, “Hello, friend. Here’s an idea for a poem: pull it over your head to see if it fits.” What I find in response, lighting up my inbox, is another awakened spirit of creativity, community, and friendship. Thank you, Terry. Thank you to all my generous friends, companions, and colleagues for these wings.

This essay was originally published in Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Volume 19, 2022-2023, 71-74.