It is an article of faith in America that poets are poor. People seem
to like it that way. The rat race public, those who scrounge at the
feet of corporate America, riding commuter trains and sucking up to
middle managers, place their own hopes and dreams at the stylized foot
of the poet, the pure creature untouched by the ugly motivation behind
making a living.
Poets do their part by cultivating a freako/roustabout image-- the nutty/goofy
poet in and out of mental hospitals, the sensitive poet on the verge
of tears; the slightly dangerous poet swearing in public—- we
all know the stereotypes.
Now when I use the word "poetry" here I'm talking only about
the genre I call American Performance Poetry: poetry written to be read
from a stage in front of a live audience. This is the lifeblood of American
poetry that saved poetry from irrelevance. There's another form of American
poetry that's really just a subset of boring European poetry and that's
called Academic Poetry. Academic Poets have figured out a way to combine
the rat race with literature. They call it "tenure". They
write about the deep dualities of townies v. students in some podunk
cornfield state university. No thanks.
But anyway, while everyone else goes about the daily tasks of daily
bread, poets live in their oblivious worlds, waiting to be trotted out
once a year on Poetry Day when frazzled Tempo Section editors send out
reporters to pound out articles on one of the officially-sanctioned
poetry news story themes: "Those darn poets!"; "Poetry
is making a comeback!"; or my personal favorite-- "The Beat
Goes On".
The idea that a performance poet could make a living off of being a
poet is, of course, laughable and scary. The concept is too outlandish
to consider. Anyone who would try to do such a thing—- make money
off of their words—- is a dangerous radical who must be stopped.
It doesn't fit in the prevailing view of the world.
So poets take odd jobs, or pursue traditional careers—- whatever
it takes to get by. The passion for poetry comes out periodically in
the form of flyers and invitations to late-night bars with the strong
scent of institutional soap. And people love working with poets because
of the novelty. They can tell their friends "oh, this one girl
I work with, she's a poet, and I've like been to some shows, and like,
anyone can get up and read a poem, and I got totally wasted and it's
like totally cool because it's like in Wicker Park and I saw this one
loft there and I totally want to move there."
So here we are, American Performance Poets contributing to the profit
margins of bar owners, beer manufacturers, newspaper conglomerates,
taxi drivers, and real estate agents while we do our best imitation
of a zoo animal—stuck in a cage, working for someone else. People
point and giggle on the way to the popcorn vendor and the T-shirt store.
We ought to do ourselves a big favor. Unlock the pre-fab cages of untouchableness,
let go of early-90s notions of the "sell-out", and realize
that every single activity performed in a market exonomy is an economic
activity. Buying a beer, leaving a tip, publishing a paper, handing
out a flyer, competing for the attention of a live audience——
those are economic activities.
Let's start viewing our poems for what they are—intellectual property.
Take personal responsibility for the quality of our products. Demand
a greater share of the profits generated from our labor and property.
American Performance Poetry is really an amalgam of two incredible growth
industries—literature and entertainment.
Essentially, performance poets are entrepreneurs. Some entrepreneurs
are suppliers of fire & water damage restoration services, some
are makers of 6-inch sandwiches, some are Mail Boxes Etc. franchisees.
Performance poets are purveyors of literary entertainment. Some are
very bad at it. Some do it just to hear themselves talk. Most do it
and don't know they're doing it. Doesn't matter. It's all a part of
one world, one system-the attempt to obtain enough the proper amount
of food, clothing, and shelter to maintain a heartbeat. Simple.
Whatever industry you happen to be in, everyone needs to consume a certain
amount of calories, everyone needs to clothe themselves against wind
and snow, everyone needs to supply their offspring with diapers and
milk. That performance poets are denied the ability to provide for themselves
with the sale of their own unique goods and services is a sham. It's
a travesty. It's a cultural bamboozling. And we ought to put an end
to it.
The Academic poets have a lot to do with the pickle we're in. Essentially,
they have ruined our market with the 50 years of crap that university
presses have been relentlessly printing and dumping onto the literary
marketplace. That's why books of poetry—- even books of American
Performance Poetry—- are the book industry's notorious "tough
sell". But if you take an unscientific poll—- if you just
ask people the open-ended question "what do you think about poetry?"
you will find that a majority have a favorable opinion of poetry in
the abstract. They may have had a good experience with a poetry teacher
in high school, or had a favorite rhyming book as a child, or they've
been to the Green Mill and loved it.
So most people have a predisposition to liking poetry. But it's true—-
poetry books do not usually make the bestseller list. To me, that indicates
a fundamental problem with the poetry delivery system. People like poetry
but no one buys it. There is opportunity in that disparity.
Exploiting differences in supply and demand is the fundamental way to
make money in a market economy. Twenty-five years a couple guys in Seattle
noticed that everyone likes coffee but no one likes to make it. Boom.
An industry is born. Some people at Xerox noticed one day that everyone
needs copies of documents but no one had an easy way of making them.
Bang. Tens of thousands of jobs are created.
No one downs people who work at Starbucks. No one blinks when photocopy
clerks get their paycheck. But a poet looking to participate in the
economy is a sell-out freako. Makes no sense. Wake up, poets—take
your place in the world economy w/o shame.
© 2003 Daniel X. O'Neil
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