Comments on: Power, Money and Fame

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:17:39 +0000

Actually, my comments were examples of my tendency to gravitate away from self-righteous humorlessness. But, hey, that’s just me.
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By: Linh Dinh

Linh Dinh — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:31:00 +0000

Regarding money and power in poetry, consider this 2006 essay by Steve Evans:
Free (Market) Verse
Ten years ago, when the New York Times Magazine set out to caricature the leading tendencies in the poetry world, it used the occasion of James Merrill’s death to file an obituary for the “poetry establishment” as a whole. Without that elegant poet’s inherited millions (his father was the Merrill in Merrill Lynch), which had trickled down to fellow poets via the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the clubby uptown world of old-style patronage—donor readings at J.P. Morgan’s former home, easy access to the pages of The New Yorker, cushy tenured chairs, guaranteed publication by FSG and Knopf, and a monopoly on prestige- and cash-conferring prizes—was fast unraveling. Barbarians of various descriptions—Language Poets, Hip Hop Poets, Neo-Formalists, Surrealists, and Nuyorican slam poets—were assembling at the gate. And it wasn’t another exquisitely crafted, emotionally muted, slyly allusive poem—such as Merrill had made his reputation on—that they were clamoring for.
If there was no trace in the magazine’s cartoon gallery of a cohort of midwestern white guys with business backgrounds aspiring to write instantly “accessible” poems about authentic American life for the amusement and improvement of semi-literate “regular” folks, that’s because it would take a presidency as benighted and hokey as that of George W. Bush to bring such a group to prominence. Through men like Dana Gioia, John Barr, and Ted Kooser, Karl Rove’s battle-tested blend of unapologetic economic elitism and reactionary cultural populism is now being marketed in the far-off reaches of the poetry world. A curiously timed gift from a pharmaceutical heir who, before slipping into four decades of crippling depression, had submitted a pseudonymous item or two to Chicago’s Poetry magazine, which politely rejected them, has bankrolled the unlikely effort.
What interested most people about Ruth Lilly’s hundred-million-dollar gift to Poetry, publicly announced in the late fall of 2002, was the sheer size of the sum. Though she bestowed even more money on an organization called Americans for the Arts, the idea that a quaintly penurious outfit like Poetry should come into such unexpected riches appealed to the journalistic imagination. The charming, Dickensian narrative involved shabby, sunless quarters in a library basement inhabited by a chain-smoking, lunch-skipping editor who had for two decades heroically sacrificed all to the culling—from ninety thousand submissions a year—of the few poems good enough to earn their two dollars a line and be brought before the eyes of the magazine’s subscribers. Now, through her mysterious beneficence, Lilly had lifted Poetry from this place of squalor and cultural obsolescence: from a grandparent warehoused in a seedy retirement home, it had been transformed into the newest and richest kid on the block, its financial capital now far exceeding the dwindling symbolic capital it had been husbanding since the days of first-wave modernism [...]
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By: Angela G.

Angela G. — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:33:56 +0000

Michael and Kenneth, your comments are perfect examples of what Linh talks about when he says, “It’s human nature to gravitate towards money, power and fame, and to admire, if not kiss ass, those who have them, and to shun, ridicule or despise those who don’t.”
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By: Mickey O'Connor

Mickey O'Connor — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:31:40 +0000

why should any life be saved ?
or taken away ?
i think angela is merely showing the terrific discrepancy
that exists or TRYING to show
the terrific discrepancy that exists
between these various worlds
maybe it’s an opportunity to
wake up is all
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:10:50 +0000

Hey Angela, how many lives does sanctimony save? Oh, wait, I remember now.
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By: Kenneth Goldsmith

Kenneth Goldsmith — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 01:30:16 +0000

Angela,
Yes, you’re right. If poets would stop drinking martinis, the bombs would stop falling and we’d solve world hunger on top of it. I’ll toast to that.
Kenneth
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:15:08 +0000

Thanks for asking, Noah. Yes, I am the greatest living American poet. How do I reconcile this with anonymity (& rejection slips)? I make sure my poems are unreadable & unpublished.
No, just kidding. That was a stupid stentorian pompous post (above). My apologies.
There is poetry & there is conversation about poetry. Both of them, I think, are important. But it’s important to realize that they are totally irreconcilable discourses.
They each have their delights & there illuminations. they each show pathways to new knowledge & understanding.
But poetry is poetry. & poetry is vastly more concrete & multidimensional & touching & deep than the endless discussion ABOUT poetry – poets’ speculation ABOUT what they THINK they are doing….
“Humility is endless” – TS Eliot
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By: Angela G.

Angela G. — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:35:35 +0000

Is there a Poet Celebdex, like a Forbes Top Earner’s list of the Top Ten Wealthiest/Most Famous Poets? How much is Kenneth Goldsmith worth? How much did he move and shake, up or down, this week?
Ironic, isn’t it, watching that YouTube of Kenny and Kasey Mohammad drinking martinis at a “glam” bar discussing poetic relevance, all lovingly recorded by Nada Gordon on glam cell phone? No one would ever know that bombs were going off in the Middle East or the global market was continuing to nosedive at that very moment.
How relevant is it that $7 for one glam martini — or even for a more earthy pitcher of Black and Tan — would hardly cover a humble dinner for a family of 3 tonight?
That’s OK, Kenny — and you other movers and shakers on The Poet Celebdex. Just keep partying like it’s 1999!
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By: "noah freed"

"noah freed" — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:29:48 +0000

But Henry, on your blog, which you apparently want people to read as you link to it in every post, you write that you believe you yourself are “the best US poet living today.” Do you really believe this? If so, how do you reconcile such claims with a valuation of non-descript anti-lumination?
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By: Vassilis Zambaras

Vassilis Zambaras — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:04:41 +0000

FLAGELLANTS, OR THE INFAMOUS WORD GAME
Goldsmith–
We know it’s no game,
We know it’s insane,
We know it’s torture
Us racking our brain,
So give us a break
If you know its name–
What’s that
Powerful, precious, fleeting
Four-letter word rhyming with
Pain?
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By: John Bloomberg-Rissman

John Bloomberg-Rissman — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:37:32 +0000

Power – no. Anyone who wants to boss anyone else around is crazy.
Fame – if that = respect and decent treatment, then I want it. If it means papparazzi, then, well, not essential.
Money – admission: I’m 58. Retirement looms. It would be nice to have enough $$ to afford to keep buying books (especially those by you people), printing paper, to keep a little press going, and to be able to afford health insurance, and some occasional travel. That does take $$. So yes, I do want some.
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By: unreliable narrator

unreliable narrator — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:32:31 +0000

Welp, Harriet will getcha for being sycophantic as well as too stroppy—my comment got eaten, which is why it says “PS” above, postscript to nothing. Maybe I forgot to use quotation marks around my own Erasmus citation?
Any rate, now I can’t remember what I said, which is obviously for the better; only I was moved by the story of Trần Dần and hope to read him someday.
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By: Angela G.

Angela G. — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 06:01:00 +0000

Right on, Linh. No swag for this art brut.
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:38:39 +0000

I’m sick of hero-celebrities, idols, wearing elaborate glittering costumes, made of rumor, adulation, education, prestige, publicity… I’m sick of poets!
Give me the nondescript anonymous people, who have sense enough to keep their own counsel. Those who struggle every day caring for their own, without doing injustice to anyone else. Those who open their bare cupboards & crowded floors to strangers, neighbors & relatives… Those children who are too exhausted & disillusioned not to speak the plain truth.
These are my heroes. They are not luminaries of any sort whatsoever.
Poets are foolish. This is part of the subtle drama, I guess. They can’t help themselves. They are holy fools, unholy fools.
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By: unreliable narrator

unreliable narrator — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:59:55 +0000

Oh and PS—food, shelter, and also a cat. Can’t write without a cat.
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By: Linh Dinh

Linh Dinh — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:43:15 +0000

Yo Kenny,
We’ll check our weapons at the door, but no glam place for me. How about a cheap bar? I’ll buy the first pitcher of Black and Tan ($7).
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By: Kenneth Goldsmith

Kenneth Goldsmith — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:23:33 +0000

Linh, dearest,
‘m going to have to treat you to lunch somewhere really glam in Philly before class. We’ll have a good time.
I’m serious.
Luv, Kenny G
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