yeah, you’re a poet, but what do you do?
Friday, March 20th, 2009 | otherStuff
“yeah, you’re a poet, but what do you do?”
the question seems to imply that
its ask-er knows what you don’t do,
because, as everybody knows:
‘you can’t make a living writing poetry!’
“yeah, you’re a poet, but what do you do?”
…as if celebrating & chronicling the journey weren’t enough, right?
…of course it isn’t;
you can’t eat poems
…our posit:
no poet,
well, very, very few anyhow,
can get by strictly on their poetry
…now, for the sake of argument, lets say a poet is;
someone who writes stuff on a fairly regular basis that they themselves refer to as poetry, &/ or
those recognized as poets by their peers for engaging in the activities described above
…for for the purposes of our definition the poet’s stature doesn’t matter, be it major academic recognition, minor street cred, -whatever
…& lets say, based on nothing scientific whatsoever, that there are some 10million poets by this definition in the ranks of the nearly 7billion folks on the planet
…carrying on in this un-scientific manner, my guess would be that there are no more than a few thousand or so of these ‘successful’ poets, (getting by strictly on revenue generated by their poetry), on the planet
…i am willing to entertain the notion that that number could be much, much lower, but not much higher
…i happily stretch our working definition of; ’strictly’ beyond merely selling books or recordings of poems, to include giving readings & talks & paid interviews, & any $$ generating mediaPumpingPromo to -move-them- units- or generate cash thru hype or performance
…but not teaching
…nope, not teaching, or any other tenured or at-will employment scenario where the poet could get by comfortably w/out the revenue their poetry generated
…so we’re talking about those few that are buying groceries & paying the rent w/ poetry, my bet is that they’re a rare breed
…even as i espouse this viewpoint, i’d like to stress that i pass no judgment on whether one’s ability to sell stuff successfully enough to support oneself makes one a better or worse poet
-(see rod mccuen)-
…many great poets had other, non-literary full time gigs, [self-publisher poet dr. w.c.williams springs to mind]
…the funny part is that those successful, prolifically published, & materially compensated few thousand poets do not seem,
-to this very opinionated & judgmental minor, minor, minor poet-
to be creating anything necessarily better, (meaningful, valid, substantial, etc.) than any of the other 10million poets on the planet
…to be continued
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