>
> Thanks for those impassioned words. It's led me
to consider my "vocation",
> and that's always a good thing. But I still
want to feed my kids and shop at
> Tesco's.
>
> best
>
> C
>
Dear Chris,
poetry was still considered a kind of sublime escape from history
and
politics sometime, in the years before the second world war -
therefore, a refuge from the miserable stage represented by the world: in Italy
this was as true as the zealous attitude of the poets-servants of the
Fascist regime. Paradoxically, war decided a break with that paralyzed situation
since the very urgency of it solicited the search of new, uncomfortable forms.
The major point was to scorn literary society, to believe that things of the
social theatre of human relations are more important than art, that poetry
has a limited field of action, therefore strict limits and that the value of a
man is rather established - as the Italian Marxist poet Fortini used to
say - "by the way he asks a waiter, (any waiter ) for a glass of water." than
from the way he composes verse. Of course at the beginning of the poetic
experience, writers are inclined to experience writing as a kind of noble
bravado.
In the light of such inauthentic scenario , some extremist poets
feel the final solution is that of Rimbaud, i.e. to stop writing. We
should always quest in the first instance - and certainly before questions
connected with money and copyrights, the difficult relation of the
poets-intellectual with the mechanism of the political economical power: the
pestilence.
But why one keeps writing: to gratify people's needs? our own?
Certainly not our pockets, since poetry has always been (everywhere, I guess )
the poorer of all arts. You want to become extraordinarily rich ? Then write
drama....(I was prepared to marry a dramatist,if I did not found a surgeon, as I
was hoping...(joking! actually, not joking).
Poets are seen shopping at Tesco (myself, in the first instance),
some, as Tom Paulin, have been caught while buying an expensive great coats at
Allders (again, he earns his living as a senior lecturer), has have shopped at
Tesco by mean of royalties (unless he is a Nobel Price or starts doing all sort
of correlated activities: translations, literary criticism, conference,
teaching, activities these that imply a life commitment on all different fronts
(these kind of poets have as their principal activity that of being teachers or
lecturers). They might get tokens from this or that poetry reading (a humble
cheque varying from 70 to 150 pounds, according to the reputation). But if one
has a numerous family, or children attending UK universities, where the parents
are required now to pay the University fees,a accommodation and living expenses,
that is certainly not enough. Poetry (not the business of writing novels, as I
said in the previous post) doesn't make anybody rich. But is fragile enough as
to be effected by the rule of the publishing market.
To be honest, whenever on the behalf of my various publishers, I
contacted distributors like Faber and Faber to check how much they charged for
the rights of Heaney or Hughes - I always found out with great surprise that - a
part from the game powers of allocating the rights - the sum requested was
really equivalent to a pack of peanuts. Nor in my knowledge, my publisher earned
from the selling of the book in translation enough money as to go for a boat
ride over the canal. So, all this business must be elsewhere than in the poetic
literary scene. In scientific medical geographical academical texts, maybe? A
month or two ago I saw Jamie at Blackwell going down the stairs to the ground
floor> He said he was looking for the scientific section and went to the
shells displaying books of geography , atlas, maps. I though he had finally
decided to pass to travel writing and become rich . But no, he was merely
looking for some references for his beautifully arranged geographical
poems...
So, in my experience, I would say that poets tend to stay poets
(that's why they become poets) and are rich mainly in spirit (with few
exceptions of those who have in their backgrounds or win a
Nobel)....
As a poet myself, I distrust inspiration and enjoy a passion for
the negative aspect of poetry.
How could I indulge in paradisiacal thoughts of real fame and
money?
By the way, the most beautiful verse in Italian is to be considered
Saint Francis's, Il cantico delle creature.
No thriumpalism. Humbleness.