[John Riley]

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/...-united-states

[Julie Steiner]

Very interesting! Thanks, John.

[Christine P'legion]

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:

Because prizes are a normative standard for success, they collected data on prizes — every prize since 1918 worth $10,000 or more in 2022 dollars. They recorded who won, what their gender and race were, where they earned their degrees, and who served as judges. Then they published what they found in a series of essays. What did they find?

They found that writers “with an elite degree (Ivy League, Stanford, University of Chicago) are nine times more likely to win than those without one. And more specifically, those who attended Harvard are 17 times more likely to win.” They found that half of the prize-winners with an MFA “went to just four schools: [University of] Iowa, Columbia, NYU, or UC Irvine.” Iowa has special clout: its alumni “are 49 times more likely to win compared to writers who earned their MFA at any other program since 2000.”

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?

[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by Christine Pennylegion

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.)

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.

[Christine P'legion]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

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.

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.

[Nick McRae]

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.

[Susan McLean]

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

[Christine P'legion]

I've been thinking about this thread again, and it seems to me that when we're discussing poetry as a profession, it's important to define the way we're using our terms. For instance, I can think of four common meanings for "a professional":

(a) Someone who has earned a professional-level degree qualifying them to Do The Thing

(b) Someone who Does The Thing as their occupation or career

(c) Someone who has achieved a high level of skill and mastery in the Doing of The Thing

(d) Someone who is paid money to Do The Thing

So which do we mean? There can be overlap between all four of them with any of the others, but of course there isn't always.

I've been paid money, sometimes very good money, by people who want to publish or use my poems, but I don't have an MFA (if we consider than a 'professional' degree), don't look to poetry as my primary occupation, and I certainly wouldn't claim to have mastered the genre. So, am I a professional poet? Maybe not; but maybe.

(And this doesn't even touch any of the mental subdivisions of "professionalism" we might have in terms of poetry in particular: having other people publish your work for free; having other people publish your work for pay; publishing a chapbook; winning a contest; publishing a collection; being named poet laureate; blah blah blah etc.)

[Julie Steiner]

I realize that this is a digression from the main topic of the thread, but James, I think it's safe to say that Dickey's effect on his students—especially his female and gay male students—was influenced by the narcissistic sense of entitlement that Rogerbob glimpsed.

(And before someone whines about Cancel Culture, I'll contend that this essay is NOT unfairly applying contemporary standards to the sexist and homophobic behavior of a Great White Man. Predatory and bullying behavior has never been okay, even if the predators and bullies of the past could formerly get away with it more easily. And I'm not trying to cancel anyone, just to advocate for not letting artists' fame and/or artistic merit excuse their serious misbehavior. Personally, I found that that context added a lot to my reading of Dickey.)

[John Riley]

Dickey read at my college. He was drunk and slobbering over the female students.

I wasn’t closely involved with arrangements but the old white male poet I got the best vibe from was W.D. Snodgrass. But what do I know? He may have been a Dick too.

The reader who touched me most was Muriel Rukeyser. She was elderly by then and while she was reading the lamp attached to the podium gave way and swung around. It only slightly touched her face but this whoosh of upset swept the room.

Edited back in to say that although he wasn’t a poet the grossest most disgusting writer I was around, and granted there weren’t so many, was Ken Kesey. It was in Boulder and apparently he came by occasionally for the girls. I saw him twice a year apart and he read the same story each time. Ginsberg would play his squeeze box and then he’d read and off to the party. Buddhist money well spent.