On the Wealth of Poetry (David Kirby)
November 7, 2009
As seen on Ed Byrne’s Assemblage:
"Look, a poem either sends you a bill or writes you a check. You can use up too much of your intellectual and emotional capital, not to mention your good will, and come away feeling had. Or you can pat your billfold and say, ‘Hey, this baby just got a little fatter.’
"When I’m asked by fellow air passengers what I do for a living and reply, ‘I write poems,’ the reaction is often a startled smile, as though they’re thinking Homer! Dante! Milton! (At least that’s what I’m thinking they’re thinking.) And then comes the lean-in, the furrowed brow, the voice thick with compassion as my new friend says, ‘But there isn’t any money in that, is there?’
"There are some pretty snappy comebacks to this one, but what I usually offer is Somerset Maugham’s ‘Poetry is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.’ Actually, Maugham says ‘money,’ not ‘poetry,’ but that’s the point. Money and poetry both act as catalysts, and they bring together objects and experiences that wouldn’t have anything to do with one another otherwise. Wealth takes many forms, and sometimes it shows up as stanzas."
–David Kirby in the New York Times Sunday Book Review
Tags:
david kirby, poetry, writers on writing, Writing
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November 9th, 2009 at 7:53 am
I love that analogy of the wallet; it gets to the core of what we have the right to ask for from a poem. It also reminds me a little of Billy Collins’s poem “Introduction to Poetry”.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:10 am
I remember a time, and Chris probably does too, when I was more impressed with that particular bit of Collins than I am today. Now it looks like a great piece of self-demonstrating work, good for introducing tyros but perhaps a bit passe for…well, a bit passe for all the friends who seemed to find it such ten years ago when I was more enamored of it. Not that there’s anything wrong with this poem, just that it is an example of what it is about: introductory poetry. Even that multi-layeredness only carries me so far today.
The wallet metaphor was nice, but needless. The simple reference to cost-benefit suffices. And what is lacking is that today’s profit is tomorrow’s loss, and vice-versa. There is nothing about poetry that is linear like a check register.
That said, how does one get in on NaDaPoWriMo? ::wink::
November 10th, 2009 at 8:25 am
But the fact that there’s nothing linear is precisely why a simple reference to cost-benefit doesn’t suffice!
I disagree about the Collins poem… still works for me. Just (a) lucky (tyro) I guess.
I’m only one poem behind on NaPoWriMo buddy… mon/wed are teaching days and my official schedule runs from 6a-10p so it’s easy to flub those ones
November 11th, 2009 at 11:15 am
I think we all know you long ago ceased to be a poetry tyro. If you like it, you like it. My relationship to many of my favorites seems to be changing, and not charitably. I’m reluctant to call it progress or maturation, but it’s definitely change. I am becoming more demanding—I think.
We can argue endlessly about niggling little details like the aptness of the wallet metaphor or our feelings for that particular Collins piece. Poetry will cluck along graciously regardless, thank God.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Well, I hope if the change isn’t charitable it is still good for you. Over the last year or so I’ve become a bit frustrated with the assumptions behind growing out of (or beyond) art. I don’t like the slight that it implies about the art and I think we tend to overlook how much of this is really our failing rather than the art itself. And I say *we* because I really mean that it happens to me too. And I don’t like it.
This came up recently in a discussion I was having about EE Cummings’ poetry, in which I was told that “it was OK” if I still liked his work, but this person now “saw through it” or something. Which not only was denigrating my ability to read but wholly eliding the question as to whether falling out of love with something isn’t just as likely the reader’s problem as the poet’s…
November 12th, 2009 at 7:16 am
Don’t know that “falling out of love” with a poem is anyone’s fault. Sometimes it’s love. Other times it’s infatuation. Still other times it’s both, and when the infatuation wanes the solid gold of the love shines through. In a non-poetry example, that’s how I feel about Heinlein today: I love his work with all its warts and wrinkles. I can’t say that about the Collins poem in question. I don’t dislike it. I don’t disrespect it. But I am no longer infatuated with it. It stands as it was, but I have changed. (No small thanks to certain poetry mavens who shall CHRIS LOTT remain nameless.)
Yikes, but I hope it doesn’t seem that I am denigrating anyone’s ability to read. I am not even a poetry dilettante, and rely on the reactions of others to help me deepen my relationships with poems. I share my opinions bluntly on some things because I don’t always put much stock in them.
November 18th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Heh, that’s an amusing exchange, guys. I referenced the Collins poem because it was stirred up by the quote–without saying anything about how much I like it (and I do still like it, though I’m also still underwhelmed by the ending, since you brought it up).