The poets gave away their own books, handbound sometimes, and letterpress broadsides made on antiquated machinery, they gave their time to editing each other’s work in their bedroom offices, they paid to have it printed, they carried each other’s books in suitcases to give to other poets, they used their day jobs at copy shops to print chapbooks and zines, they performed their work for nothing but applause, and they gave each other places to stay, couches to sleep on. Not for profit, but for literature. I guess, I tell him, it’s easy for me to believe there’s an alternative to capitalism because I feel like I’ve lived it. Within capitalism, of course.