Getting Paid to Poetize

by Andrea Scarpino

Los Angeles

 

One thing almost every poet will tell you is that poetry doesn’t pay. At least not in cash. It may pay in more existential ways, helping to make for a fulfilling life, encouraging emotional growth, that kind of thing. But for most of us, poetry isn’t going to build a retirement fund, pay for groceries or send the kids to college. And for the most part, I’m grateful for that. Gregory Orr has a lovely poem that reads:

How lucky we are

That you can’t sell

A poem, that it has

No value. Might

As well

Give it away.

That poem you love,

That saved your life,

Wasn’t it given to you?

For me, the answer is definitely yes. The poem that saved my life was given to me by Dr. Oden while he was preparing to give me anesthesia for a pain treatment. I was in high school and was about to move across the country by myself. He read me Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” and then gave me her book with his phone number written inside. Dr. Oden was one of the few adults at that time in my life who I felt actually listened to me, was on my side. “The Journey” ends with the lines, “determined to do/ the only thing you could do–/ determined to save/ the only life you could save.” When he read those words to me, I cried. And I knew I would be okay.

But sometimes, the writing and endless revising of poetry, the constant attention to new publications, new interpretations of old publications, new readings and conferences to attend—well, it just feels like a lot of work for something that few Americans seem to value, that comes with little monetary reward, that feels like a solitary yelp in the wilderness.

Recently, though, I’ve found myself getting paid to poeticize. At one reading, a hat was passed for contributions and the contents folded up neatly, passed discreetly into my hands. A journal sent me a $30 check to pay for the publication of one of my poems. And yesterday, I presented on a local panel about politics and poetry that paid surprisingly well. When I got home and opened up my envelope, I gasped.

These are moments that I love, not because I think poetry should more fully enter the consumer economy—I agree with Orr that we’re lucky a poem “has no value.” But because it feels a little like magic to exchange my writing and thinking, my hours and hours of revision and thought, for a lovely dinner, a glass of fancy wine. In other words, to exchange my mostly invisible, abstract work for something concrete, salient. And to be able to share that exchange with others. To see poetry really at work in the world.

 

Andrea Scarpino is the west coast Bureau Chief of POTB. You can visit her at:

www.andreascarpino.com