[New-Poetry] Business of poetry

[David Graham]

Students fairly commonly inquire whether there are any poets in the U.S. who
"make a living" with their poetry.

I think a simple answer is tricky.  If by "make a living" one means
royalties alone, I doubt there are many.  Maybe none?  I would venture to
guess that even Billy Collins, Maya Angelou, Mary Oliver and such luminaries
do not earn much of a white-collar wage from royalties alone.  Certainly
they make much more from reading and lecture fees, in any case.

I once heard Donald Hall remark that he had earned more editing a single
textbook than for all of his books of poetry combined.

And how would you count someone like Mark Strand?  Whatever his book sales,
I'm sure he made most of his daily bread down the decades not in reading
fees but in the classroom.  Yet he wouldn't have been in the classroom had
he not had a high reputation as a poet, etc.

The wonderful and underappreciated Robert Francis made a valiant go of it,
trying to live purely as a poet.  He lived in poverty his whole adult life,
accordingly.  But even he had to give music lessons and such to get by, not
to mention growing his own food and, near the end of his life, accepting
charity to get his house painted and so forth.



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David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
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