Alternative poetry

What is it alternative to? It is alternative, for one thing, to a top-down system that rewards a tiny per cent of writers near the top -- and most of them deserve greater recognition for their work, their bearing, and their position -- and turns the majority of the rest of writers, especially young writers, into lifelong paying customers, if not of poetry and writing, then of therapy for it, and into audience. The alternative poetry scene operates in cities around the country, possibly the world, and continues its work more as a collective based in poetic friendship. There is love in it.