[HN Gopher] Literary Fight Club: On the Great Poets' Brawl of '68
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Literary Fight Club: On the Great Poets' Brawl of '68
Author : lermontov
Score : 22 points
Date : 2023-11-29 22:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lithub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lithub.com)
| huytersd wrote:
| How did so many people make a living as poets. Seems like an
| absolute luxury.
| HansardExpert wrote:
| Why? It seems no different than actors or musicians. Maybe they
| didn't make a living and 'just got by'.
|
| While we're on HN I ask the same question about software
| engineers. How did (do) so many people make a living producing
| Twitter or Facebook? If that isn't luxury I don't know what is.
|
| If I had to choose, I think I'd rather live in a world full of
| poets than software engineers.
| lainga wrote:
| The simplest summary I can pull out of my head is... big
| companies pay them big money to put big ads between the
| content, at so great a margin that all the excess profit goes
| towards searching for the next means of striking it rich. Now
| you
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Big companies are missing a trick. They could pay for
| product placement in poems.
|
| I _hate_ the idea. But they could.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Because they deliver a product for advertisers to use, and
| those pay top dollar.
|
| Poets as a social gain I can see, but in terms of the
| financial gain? Not so clear.
|
| One could make the claim that they create artistic spaces
| that turn crime-ridden areas into havens of expression, which
| bankers then seem to value and then buy houses in (whereby
| the cycle begins anew until the city is fully gentrified)
| JohnFen wrote:
| > It seems no different than actors or musicians
|
| Most actors and musicians don't make a living doing those
| things, either.
|
| > If I had to choose, I think I'd rather live in a world full
| of poets than software engineers.
|
| Absolutely. It's not even close.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| You can look up most of the names mentioned and see that they
| had day jobs in academia or jounalism.
| cafard wrote:
| Hardly anyone makes a living as a poet, unless you count a few
| songwriters. American academia has employed a lot of poets.
| Otherwise: T.S. Eliot spent much of his life working for a
| publisher, Faber & Faber; William Carlos Williams was a
| physician; Philip Larkin was a librarian at an English
| university; St. John Perse was a diplomat; I think Walt Whitman
| worked as a printer for a while.
| lainga wrote:
| And in music, the most famous example, Philip Glass the
| dishwasher repairman
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Joke I assume? Unless there's a Philip Glass the adult-
| films actor.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| "While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to
| find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine,
| staring at me in disbelief. 'But you're Philip Glass!
| What are you doing here?' It was obvious that I was
| installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be
| finished. 'But you are an artist,' he protested. I
| explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a
| plumber as well and that he should go away and let me
| finish."
|
| https://improvisedlife.com/2014/06/11/phillip-glass-
| world-re...
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Saint-John Perse famously wrote little poetry as a diplomat.
| Except for his stint in China, his diplomatic career involved
| an intentional turning away from poetry. What allowed him to
| return to poetry, in exile in the USA, was a Library of
| Congress consultant position created for him that was mostly
| a sinecure. Indeed, few make a living from poetry, but a
| sinecure has historically been the most that a poet could
| hope for.
|
| Also, Perse had rich and powerful friends and lovers in the
| USA, which allowed him to enjoy countryside retreats and fine
| dining beyond what that LoC position could have allowed him.
| Easier to be a poet when one's needs are amply met and one
| can work in peace.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| And yet Wallace Stevens wrote while serving as an executive
| at an insurance company.
| cafard wrote:
| For some years before the US had a Poet Laureate, the
| equivalent honor was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of
| Congress. I know Randall Jarrell held the position for a
| year (whence, I suppose "The Woman at the Washington Zoo"),
| and I must have known of others.
|
| I was not aware of the effect of his diplomatic career on
| his output...
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Perse wasn't that consultant, but rather a special
| position as a consultant in French literature was created
| for him.
|
| That Perse abandoned poetry after the publication of
| _Anabase_ , because he felt it would conflict with his
| career as a diplomat, is a cornerstone of any biography
| of the poet.
| edavison1 wrote:
| Whitman was a full-time journalist for many years, both at
| the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and elsewhere.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Very nearly no poets ever made a living as poets. Most artists
| never made a living as artists, either.
|
| As an artist friend of mine once said: nobody chooses to be an
| artist. You become an artist because there's something inside
| you that will drive you crazy if you don't get it out.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Not everyone has to make a living. The arts are full of
| recipients of multi-generational wealth that affords them a
| lifestyle committed to their work. Mind you, this doesn't take
| a massive fortune: an inheritance of a couple million could
| last someone a very long time if they're living like a starving
| artist. Most noteworthy artists have a backstory like this.
|
| But in the off chance that an artist's work becomes noteworthy,
| suddenly commissions, publishing deals, professorships, etc.
| become viable vocations.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| "Most" might be an exaggeration. There is Emily Dickinson --
| who else?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Literary head-butting! Norman Mailer discusses head butting Gore
| Vidal, at about 8:00 into this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZQfA-XN2OU
| cafard wrote:
| Yes, and he bit Bruce Jay Friedman's shoulder, after Friedman
| had knocked him down, in a fight that Mailer started.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I didn't know about that one.
|
| I think there's an episode of Cavett where he actually goes a
| round with a real boxer (pulling punches, of course).
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