Yeah, well, better than waiting for an oil truck!
Though I should have said in my post to Jerry about his inaugural snap that I'm
just waiting for the oil truck to fill the tank that heats the house. I don't take
these various 'warnings' very seriously; it's hard to. My favorite was when I was
on Cape Cod and there were 'warnings' that 'Islamic terrorists" had been sited in
Provincetown and even a claim that it might be Osama himself. This news was
met with much laughter, for it was the mental image of a turbaned and bearded
Islamic terrorist thinking Provincetown with its beach clothes and gay couples
was just the place to hide!
I don't know about this idea that "all poetries benefit," for in my experience
lately there seems to be some truth of it. In his article, Bernstein criticizes
among others the Lannan Foundation for being part of this movement to
'popularize' poetry. But on the other hand, this is the same foundation that is
the main funding support in recent years for a number of small press
publishers, BOA, Greywolf, etc, and so the books brought out by their presses
which includes a variety of poetic approaches and practices exist. Not to
mention, the foundation gives awards and fellowships to individual poets, as it
did recently to me even though as you note my books are nowhere to be found
in New Jersey, and that is a great thing, for it's not just money, it's time, several
years of not having to take on a blinding number of adjunct courses, etc. For
instance, the Academy, which you mentioned earlier, gave Ruth Stone early in
her career the Delmore Schwartz Prize for $25,000, I think then, and it allowed
her to buy this small house on a Vermont mountain, not a great house, no glass
in the windows, no indoor plumbing (it took another prize ten years later to
bring water into the house). But it did give her a place to live and raise her three
daughters after her husband, himself a gifted writer, committed suicide, and in
those days when it was impossible for a woman poet to find a tenured job at
most universities and colleges (she had previously been scrambling for one
three month spot to another with great gaps inbetween), a life saving thing. So I
think it may be true, that it does benefit any number of poets and poetries, not
all at once, but here and there, and all of these benefits are not necessarily
noted; it's just the funding for the poems on banners hung downtown in various
cities. Anyway, I don't know, sometimes this reminds me of what Eleanor Wilner
said about the poetry world and its various carpings that it was like a tank at a
fish hatchery where the little food tossed into the tank made the water roil all
the more.
best,
Rebecca
---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:39:49 -0500
>From: Ken Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: down with the down with poetry crowd
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Dominic Fox wrote:
>
>>>All poetries benefit in the society when any one form
>>>of the art is pushed forward.
>>>
>>>
>>Great! I'll sit here and wait for my cheque then.
>>
>>Dominic
>>
>>
>Is this where I say "Don't quit your day job while you're waiting"?:-)
>
>ken
>
>--
>Kenneth Wolman
>Proposal Development Department
>Room SW334
>Sarnoff Corporation
>609-734-2538
|