A hand moves
eye starts
words go
***
Forget order
impose nothing
onto things
***
Pulling things up
rooted resemblances
of what
***
Pilings of stuff
tangled roots
early Zephyr surf team
cutting through
pillars of burned
out Santa Monica
pier late '70s
California
When shit gets petty
get petty
right back
(for Ted Berrigan
& Alice Notley
'81-'82)
***
One makes the world
of the poem
making the world
of words the poem makes
***
Language is color
the medium resists
***
there are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as
mass, there are only
eyes in all heads,
to be looked out of
***
A sudden brilliance
& then
***
Ideas acquire years
***
It cannot but be
***
More than
willing
this
happens
to be
just
notes that
any one
so might
accrue
of their own
asking
What's meant
isn't
***
I did this thing
I did
in the dark of light
I dig
this thing I did
***
just being here
touching me
other one
here, here
just touch
***
You would be certain
of that brick
***
bits incomplete
echo any interest
***
I am so jealous of color
***
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Now back to the title of this site No Money in Poetry
But is there poetry in money?? Check out Bay Area poet Jack Foley's humorous take followed by that of Big Sur's Henry Miller
“NO MAN BUT A BLOCKHEAD EVER WROTE, EXCEPT FOR MONEY”
—Dr. Johnson
why would you want to
tra la tra la sang isadora
publish a book
as she danced
if you didn’t want
in practically
to make money from it
nothing at all
why would you put
mi chiamano Mimi
money into it
says the pretty young girl
if there were no money
in the opera written
to be got out of it
in the hope of gaining
why would you want to
fame &
write a poem
money
if you didn’t want
you gotta eat don’t you?
to make money from it
“consider the lilies of the field”
why would you want
not everybody has a heavenly father
to paint a picture
or as we say in the theater
why would you want to write a song
a sugar daddy
(are you crazed? do you think you’re a bird?)
or golly a sugar mommy
if there were no money in it
or even a sugar nephew
why would you want
don’t be a diabetic sweetie
to do anything at all
you need something
anything at all
to put in your coffee
why bestir yourself
or your coffer
why get thee out of bed
before you get put
why make something beautiful
in yr god damn coffin
whoo the old moola
so go out there swinging
if you don’t want
shake that thing
wow the green stuff
but don’t be too bohème honey
to make money
when you show em your legs
(gimme the coin I want that sweet)
make sure they show you
why would you
their credit cards
anything
you want to be kempt
if you couldn’t anything
but you gotta be “kept”
why would you money
“better to go down dignified
publish money a
“with boughten friendship at your side”
money if you money
a poet said that and he made lots of it
didn’t money
want to money
money
(why?)
money
Make
money
money!
Money!
- Jack Foley's recent bio = Balding. "Ubiquitous." Tap dances. Writes. Erases
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I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God. This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, and defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants of God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty
To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money. Money, money everywhere and still not enough! And then no money, or a little money, or less money, or more money but money always money . and if you have money , or you don't have money, it is the money that counts, and money makes money, but what makes money make money? - Henry Miller
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Indispensable Essay by Donald Hall
When I read this, I wondered what poet could live without it. Then, putting it on here, I couldn't imagine abridging it. However, since it's "longish," I'll provide it's beginnings here and add a link to the full essay. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing!
Poetry and Ambition
by Donald Hall
1. I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.
An ambitious project—but sensible, I think. And it seems to me that contemporary American poetry is afflicted by modesty of ambition—a modesty, alas, genuine ... if sometimes accompanied by vast pretense. Of course the great majority of contemporary poems, in any era, will always be bad or mediocre. (Our time may well be characterized by more mediocrity and less badness.) But if failure is constant the types of failure vary, and the qualities and habits of our society specify the manners and the methods of our failure. I think that we fail in part because we lack serious ambition.
2. If I recommend ambition, I do not mean to suggest that it is easy or pleasurable. "I would sooner fail," said Keats at twenty-two, "than not be among the greatest." When he died three years later he believed in his despair that he had done nothing, the poet of "Ode to a Nightingale" convinced that his name was "writ in water." But he was mistaken, he was mistaken. ... If I praise the ambition that drove Keats, I do not mean to suggest that it will ever be rewarded. We never know the value of our own work, and everything reasonable leads us to doubt it: for we can be certain that few contemporaries will be read in a hundred years. To desire to write poems that endure—we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and that if we succeed we will never know it.
Every now and then I meet someone certain of personal greatness. I want to pat this person on the shoulder and mutter comforting words: "Things will get better! You won't always feel so depressed! Cheer up!"
But I just called high ambition sensible. If our goal in life is to remain content, no ambition is sensible. ... If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best.
3. But for some people it seems ambitious merely to set up as a poet, merely to write and to publish. Publication stands in for achievement—as everyone knows, universities and grant-givers take publication as achievement—but to accept such a substitution is modest indeed, for publication is cheap and easy. In this country we publish more poems (in books and magazines) and more poets read more poems aloud at more poetry readings than ever before; the increase in thirty years has been tenfold.
So what? Many of these poems are often readable, charming, funny, touching, sometimes even intelligent. But they are usually brief, they resemble each other, they are anecdotal, they do not extend themselves, they make no great claims, they connect small things to other small things. Ambitious poems usually require a certain length for magnitude; one need not mention monuments like The Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queen, Paradise Lost, or The Prelude. "Epithalamion," "Lycidas," and "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" are sufficiently extended, not to mention "The Garden" or "Out of the Cradle." Not to mention the poet like Yeats whose briefer works make great connections.
I do not complain that we find ourselves incapable of such achievement; I complain that we seem not even to entertain the desire.
Please press here for the full essay!
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