Poetry as a Profession?
 

Very interesting! Thanks, John.

That's an interesting read, John; thanks for posting it. I was struck by these two paragraphs, introducing Spar/Young/Grossman's methodology and subsequent conclusions:

I understand looking at poetry prizes as a marker of poetic success, especially since the data seems to have been relatively available. But I think that there are many poets writing and publishing -- achieving professional "success" of one stripe or another -- who are not winning poetry prizes because they are not entering poetry contests at all. I find it somewhat baffling that the discussion of privilege and lack of privilege so often centers around race to the exclusion of class. (I don't mean that race doesn't matter; I mean that class also matters and is often completely ignored.)

I make a regular practice of submitting poems for publication and have had some modest success with that, having placed about twenty poems since I really started tackling it seriously two years ago. Some of those have even paid me. But the overwhelming majority of my submissions are to outlets which do not charge submission fees. We're a single-income family; I've got three young kids to feed and clothe; my own "pocket money" is $25/mo which is less than it often costs to enter a single poetry contest (and as a Canadian poet the gap is even wider because of our relatively poor currency compared to the USD, Euro, or British Pound). Sometimes I will pay $3 or $4 or $5 to submit to a journal where I think I've got a pretty good chance. But $20 or $30 or more for a contest? Forget it.

I think it's a reasonable conclusion that there's some... I can't think of the word I want... some self-reinforcement in the cycle of winners coming from elite universities and MFA programs, which (arguably?) increases the prestige of those programs, which draws more writers, which creates more winners, and round and round we go. But maybe if you have enough personal wealth or family support to go to Harvard or enroll at the Iowa Writers Workshop... then you have enough money to enter as many contests as you please, as well.

What do you think? Is my reading off-base here?

Christine, I wholeheartedly agree that economic class (if that's what you mean by "class") is very, very important; in fact, I strongly suspect that a lot of the focus on race is actually a proxy for economic class. But the reason that this very imperfect proxy is the best available approximation for economic class is that it's very hard to gather data on that without contacting people and convincing them to participate in a very nosy survey.

Yes, economic class is what I meant. And I think you're right, too, about race being as proxy -- certainly there are deep parallels in many parts of the world. But both race and economic class are more nuanced than we'd often like to believe -- than it would be convenient to believe -- especially when we start looking at layers of what we might call "competing intersectionalities". Who is more privileged: the rich black woman or the poor white man? The gay doctor or the straight janitor? People are complex and live in complex societies and we can only get so reductive before we stop talking about reality at all.

I've noticed that the writing of many award winners has a similar distinguished feel, and haven't come across much (any?) that I'd call jarring in any way.

Rewarding poets might have a similar dynamic as you'd find in a hiring manager. With something so subjective you need visual markers to justify your choice, Ivy league schools being a pretty obvious marker.

In the same vein, I think you're going to get some level of conformity in the actual writing too, because committees won't want to make unusual choices.

I've absolutely found writing I loved this way (George Seferis, Czesław Miłosz, Wislawa Szymborska come to mind). But I've also found great writing locally that'd never win an award because it's too outside the norm.

Christine, here is a tip about fees for book contests. It may or may not help you, depending on whether you live in an area that has arts councils that give small grants to local artists. Many book contests have significant fees in the 25-35 dollar range, and entering those book contests can be one of the few ways to get a poetry book published, outside of vanity presses. When I lived in Minnesota, it was relatively easy to apply for small grants for artists, so for each of my three full-length poetry manuscripts and one chapbook manuscript, I applied for about $300 to fund entry into enough contests to give my book a decent chance. Several times I won none of them, but both of my first two books and my chapbook were published as a result of entering a contest whose entry was funded by those small grants. I learned that the scattershot approach was a waste of time, so after the first time, I entered fewer contests, but made sure that I entered only those that had actually published a formalist poetry book in the past.

I consider it to be a waste of time, too, to enter contests for individual poems, unless the contest is specifically geared toward formal poems of the kind I write. Do not be lured into entering contests based on liking the work of the final judge, who will probably see only a handful of the finalists' works. All of the other manuscripts will probably be screened out by students or interns whose tastes may have nothing in common with yours.

Susan

"To be a poet is a condition, not a profession," Frost said. Can I get a grant to look into that?

Susan, that is a great point about grants -- thank you. I am a registered artist with the Canada Council for the Arts, which is our national grant body, though I haven't actually applied for anything yet. But they do cover things like workshop fees and even childcare for the same, so I'll have to dig around and see if submission fees would also qualify. I'm slowly inching my way toward a first chapbook right now, so I will definitely keep it in mind as an option!

As far as single-poem contests go, the only one I ever do is the Rattle poetry prize... the prize itself is a moonshot but the fee extends my subscription by another 3 issues so that's good enough for me!

It's po-biz and you win some and lose some, and I don't think an article that anaylzes all prize winning poems since 1918 and focuses only on major awards has the slightest relationship to today's situation or to the people posting on the sphere. (When it focuses on writing since 2000 it is more meaningful.) Cast a much larger net (contests with a $250 prize, for example) and limit it to the last five or ten years, and I think you might prove something.

Another problem I have with some of the comments here is that they apparently assume that the judge, or judges, know who the writer is, and the writer's background. That may be true for a few major awards, like the National Book Award, but in 99%+ of the cases the judges do not know the entrants. I've entered hundreds of competitions, from book awards to single poems, won a few and chalked up enough "almosts" to give me material for a poem about being a perennial runner-up, and I don't believe there was one of them where the identity of the entrants was known to the judges. The article analyzes the creme de la creme de la creme. That's not my world.

Not everyone is able to do the retired gentleman poet thing, though, and for those of us at a point in our lives where the pressures of kids, jobs, and a pandemic response that the powers-that-be effectively airballed, having no support to speak of was a real problem for just continuing to do the thing. It's one thing to run one's self ragged as a single person, but it's a lot harder to justify when kids need help with homework, not to mention food, shelter, school supplies, piano lessons, and all the rest.

And yes, that's a kvetch, not really out of butt-hurt that my last book wasn't reviewed in The New York Times or whatever (insert jerkoff motion), but in the sense that just continuing to do the thing is extremely difficult on more than a hobbyist level.

Damm you, Quincy, I'm neither gentle nor a gentleman!

I (discreetly) got an MFA in 2021. I didn't tell many people, partially because I told myself I would never get one, and partially because the reason I told myself I would never get one remained true after I got one. You are welcome to DM me with any questions. I will just say that what the program gave me (and it was fully funded; you must, if you decide to do one, make sure it is fully funded) was time (funding gives you that time). I had great professors, but I didn't learn a single thing and didn't expect to. What I learned was what I taught myself while there, and the time the program gave me allowed me to do so. To be able to just think about poetry and to read for two years is something I'll probably never have again. I wouldn't have written Etymologies without that time. Of course, we'll see what happens when it's actually published (April!)

That said, sometimes I posted on these forums the same poems I workshopped for class. The commentary here was absolutely better than what I got in class, comments from some professors excepted.

My professors were invaluable in helping me navigate the "professional" side of poetry: submitting to contests, publishers, etc. Something I have never been that interested in or good at, very much to my disadvantage. One professor forced me to write an artist statement so that he could give me feedback and so that I would have one already written. That was very helpful.

So paradoxically, I think if you are interested in poetry mainly from a career perspective, and a lot of my cohort were, the MFA is pretty useless. It's not going to make you more artistic or creative. But if you would be writing poetry regardless of if anyone reads it, if it's just something you do because it helps you make sense of the world and because it is fun, then the MFA will actually help you a lot because of the time it gives you to be creative. Whatever business-side stuff you learn is just a bonus.

I'll probably delete all of this later.

Glad I read this before you deleted it, Walter. Very interesting.
RM

I'm ready to do the retired gentleman poetry thing. Thank you very much.

I think we've cracked it. Maybe for those in the same general life stage as me and Quincy the plan simply has to be to get the kids launched first, and then go get the MFA when we're fifty.

The kids are launched in my case, so there goes that excuse.

The parents [mine and my husband's] need increasing amounts of time and attention, though. Their golden years have been less-than-golden, to say the least, due to things that are probably genetic. So I've greatly reduced my expectations of how productive my own retirement is likely to be. I'm becoming more impatient about waiting for the best time to do things. The best time may never come.

Thanks for your very valuable comments, Walter. Please don't delete them.

Hi,

This strikes home to me. But I also disagree, to some extent. It's possible to make space (if not time). All it means is that one has to push the practice to the boundaries of living (less sleep, writing on trains, writing whilst waiting for your fractious baby to eventually fall asleep in your arms). As a potentially very irritating practical point, baby-slings are extremely useful if you want/need to keep up with practice whilst you're nursing. And yes, I have written whilst cooking porridge with a breastfeeding baby.

Work clever, make space. And work towards a trajectory where you can make the work pay enough that no-one can call it a hobby? In the UK art world we call this a 'portfolio career', where you'll do a bit of freelance, a bit of teaching, and a bit of work on your own beloved projects. I am not sure how this translates to the US.

And if anyone is thinking, 'Oh, but you're an artist', that's fair enough - but ... I learned the technical arts secondhand (broke girl narrative) working as an artist's model whilst an undergrad to pay my fees. I was a dull nature poet for a long time. I then looked at the market (you'll all hate that phrase probably) and found a place which spoke to my drawing strengths, my strengths in digital technology and my strengths in choosing words. And I started to break even.

But all the time I made the space to make work. And what I made (words-only/ haiku/ art/ drawing) was driven not by my choice but my constraint. During the baby-sling period I wrote haiku. And it wasn't all shit haiku, either.

Age doesn't matter, what you do doesn't matter, whether you need to make money or not doesn't matter unless you need to make money. Just make, if you want to. If you need to monetize then it's more difficult, but maybe think about how you can make space, not time.

Sarah-Jane

I read a review last night of a new book about the romantic movement in music. Apparently, I haven't read the book yet, The Beloved Vision, the author writes of how the composers of the era were freelancers. I didn't know Litz was rejected by Paris Conservatory and that Elgar or Brahms never studied formally. The thesis is that if they were composers today they'd disappear into a university job and never be heard of again.

I don't think the question is about what we do or have done to care for our families. I started a business in educational publishing and committed my writing and editing to that for decades to give my children a better childhood than I had. I don't regret that. The big question is what has turning literary fiction and poetry into a profession created? Right now it's very clear other considerations instead of the quality of work are being used to admit people to the best programs. Maybe it's the right thing to do for other reasons but that is the point. It's for other reasons. And then there are the hundreds of struggling small private colleges that now have very expensive "low-residency" MFA programs they use to raise money. How is that not corruption? This is not to mention the obvious advantages a student from a privileged family will always have when it comes to being accepted into any school or having the opportunity to be better prepared.

The important question is what has turning the writing of poetry into a profession done to poetry? There are people here who insist that turning away from received meter and rhyme is the reason poetry has lost its appeal when the only type of poetry that has appeal now is spoken poetry which is seldom in meter or a regular rhyme scheme and is seldom if ever written by people with graduate degrees in writing. That is why, imo, giving Dylan the Nobel was a breath of air.

I wonder what getting an MFA would have done to Keats? What sort of poetry would he have written nestled into a steady salary? Hopkins?

These are legitimate questions to anyone who has ended their subscription to Poetry. (I don't know what it's like in other countries, btw.)

Maybe the bigger question is will there be a revolt against the Academy? I don't see it happening. If it happens it will probably be in a medium not dependent on publication in large university press journals. But there is so much noise could it even be noticed?

This is what the article is about.

One more thing--I've never applied to an MFA program so am not writing out of hurt feelings.

All of my favorite poets had day jobs at the post office, insurance company, and library. The rest were cowboys.

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.

Yeah, Shaun, ha, there is a bias against those of us who have studied it, and teach literature. Like we're not nuts too.

RC, yes, she can bring tears to my eyes--"eyes that had not watered 70 years." (J.C. Ransom)

Julie, Roger, Rick, Shaun, I think the word professional is overused, although I doubt that most people here would consider themselves amateurs, nor should they.

It's embarrassing when someone refers to himself as an artist or a poet.

Randall Jarrell said this: "A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great."

Total tosh. Where do you get it from?

Duncan

From Randall Jarrell's definition, a poet is one who, if he's lucky, occasionally has a poem happen to him. This removes agency from the so-called poet and returns it its rightful owner, the muse. As somebody else once said, "To have once been visited by the muse is to be forever haunted by it."

Would you really find it "embarrassing" if, for example, you had met Theodore Roethke and asked what he did, and he answered, "I'm a poet"? Would Louise Gluck be a posturing embarrassment if she claimed, during her Nobel acceptance speech, that she was a poet?

Tim, I suppose there are people you might hang out with who would laugh at you for saying you're a poet. Perhaps your co-workers who have a different mindset? I used to feel the same way, hiding my poetry writing from my office colleagues. But I grew up and just accepted that writing poetry is part of what defines me and nothing to be ashamed of.

Louise Gluck is indeed a "posturing embarrassment." For the record, no one was ever more deserving than Bob Dylan. At his insurance company, no one knew that Wallace Stevens was a poet on the side.

The articles are asking what has the university done to poetry and music? What was lost when literary writing means you do a masters degree and hopefully land a job turning out more poets? How much does it effect or diminish the chances of something new? I know many people here want something old, but would the romantic movement have started at Eastern Carolina University or Tiny College America? People here may make their living in that system. That is what you’re supposed to do. To ask what is lost by turning any art into an academic field is the question a d it’s a legitimate one.

I read, study and admire Louise Gluck’s poetry.

I'm more likely to describe myself as a writer than a poet, not because of embarrassment, but because 'poet' is a bit showy.

If you're a writer you're like everyone else. But poetry implies strong writing skill, and intellect.

I wonder if there is a gender line here, too. Men are typically expected to be humble. For women, the title usually suits a bit better.

That's where we differ. I don't think the term "poet" is boastful. If a person lives a life in which writing poetry is a major theme, that person is a poet. Maybe a bad poet, maybe a good one, but a poet either way. It's not a title conferred upon a person. It's a description of them, a fact about them. How can we know the dancer from the dance?