[New-Poetry] Business of poetry

[Anny Ballardini]

Yes, that is the way it goes. Leonardo had to draw war machines to survive.
As usual, nothing new under the same burning sun.


On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 7:56 PM, David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/
>
> Poetry Library:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
> ====================================================
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>



-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20081029/83a5692f/attachment.html