Though maybe not a professional, A. E. Stallings is a naturally gifted poet. No news to anyone on this board, but she deserves this write-up in the Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/b...sultPosition=1

Tim,

Thanks for posting this witty and well-deserved review. Its last line pulled tears from me, the most emotion I've felt in years from a poem.

Yes, she's exceptionally good at being good.

If A.E. Stallings isn't a professional poet, maybe our criteria need tweaking.

One definition of "profession" is "a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation," and in that sense of the word most of us here are engaged in a profession. However, the word "professional" appears to be more limited to whether or not you earn your livelihood doing something, and few of us would qualify in that sense (and it's none of my business whether Alicia would or not, though I suppose she more than qualified at least back when she won her MacArthur grant).

Calling any artist a "professional" artist is demeaning. I wouldn't call Frank Auerbach a "professional". This is the problem, it seems, with this whole discussion.

I see what you mean, Rick, but I wonder if that's just because artists of every stripe have been brainwashed by art consumers into thinking that artists are somehow corrupted by money so they shouldn't expect to be given any. After all, poets will still write the poems and let publishers print them for no money, so why pay them? It's easier just to say you don't want to demean them by paying them, since they are ethereal art-for-arts-sake creatives who live in a moneyless realm.

But apart from poets, there are plenty of other artists out there who have managed to make their art a profession. Illustrators, novelists, songwriters, musicians, graphic artists, photographers, etc. Why should it be demeaning to be called a professional poet but not a professional novelist or a professional composer?

The reason I would give is that poets have been trained to think that what they do isn't making a real contribution to anyone, so no one should be expected to pay for it, and that even the thought of money entering a poet's head will automatically desecrate the page he is writing on and render his poetry false and commercial. Meanwhile, Yo Yo Ma gets to be an artist and no one thinks less of him for not having a real profession.

I dunno. I think calling artists professionals is like calling priests professionals. The trick is that not everyone who "makes art" is an artist. A lot of art makers certainly are professionals.

Well, that's certainly not the worst a priest could be called. I think the term "artist" is a little silly, especially, but only, these days. Most of the time, it just means that you were/are successful. Even if what you do is just obviously horrible. Faulkner had a great reply about this upon his arrival in Japan.

Actually, it comes down to how you define a portrait. As in: A portrait is a picture of what?

My profession is a professor, but I profess that I don't feel like a "professional," and I hope I never do.