On community

Set: All poets
Subset: American poets
Subset: "Experimental" American poets
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with blogs
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with poetry blogs
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with poetry blogs who DIY
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with poetry blogs who DIY and are women

Or
Set: All poets
Subset: American poets
Subset: Poets in the North East
Subset: Poets in New York City
Subset: Slam poets in New York City
Subset: Male slam poets in New York City
Subset: White male slam poets of the Bowery Poetry Club scene

Etc. Just examples.

It's true that just being a poet (writing poems and/or reading them in public and/or publishing them in any of several different "places") does not include you in a community. It includes you in an avocation, I guess. That's a society (the dictionary overlaps community with society in the top-level, but deeper down we use them differently).

It's in the smaller subsets, and where overlap of interests and activities happens that communities are formed, and the meaningfulness/functionalities of communities increase as their size decreases or shared purpose/intensity is focused. Sometimes communities can be hundreds (one listserv I'm on would qualify, at least for me), or a dozen, or fewer. Two? Yeah, I've been in communties of two (most obviously, my marriage).

Does the definition of community exclude competition? Nuh uh. (Shared resources get divided, so who gets what?) But as it's generally defined, a community does emphasize exchange of ideas, symbiotic inspiration, and mutual aid among members who are in pursuit of a common goal, over competition.

The mutuality/symbiosis/exchanges between members of communities are highly fluxible [sic], tho. Certainly some give more and others take more. (And bullies are dysfunctional--most research has shown that tho they act as they want to be apart, what they really want is to be part, but for various reasons feel unworthy/unaccepted. A community's most effective response is social shaming, including shunning. Other tactics are only effective for individuals in close and/or authoritative relationships with the bully.)

Participating in a community is a choice. One becomes part of a community by participating. One participates at a depth one chooses for onself.

Just as one can opt out by choosing not to participate in that way.

And to get back to that for me above: it's also possible to act in a communal fashion toward opt-out individuals and still receive some of the benefits of community. Or burn out.

So, like, two people go on a trip, and they come back, and they run into a mutual friend. And that friend asks "how was your trip?" And their answers will be different. One says the weather was great, it was a lot of fun, we had a great dinner, etc. The other says it wasn't as restful as I thought it would be, I didn't like the hotel, my favorite part was the day it rained.

They didn't go on two different trips.

Or did they?

Community is self-defined. If you (one, anybody, me) are not getting what you expect "in return," either change your expectations (particularly about returns) or change your group. Or the size of your group. Or how much attention you pay to the whole of it. Because it's just not the case that the more involved you are the more you get out of it, and sometimes the opposite is true, when your self-defined community is plagued with too many thugs or mooches.