O for the love of po[money]try

what's this about poets not making any money!?? no!!!! on the one day that i kinda put myself on a news blackout listening to my stacks of music cds rather than npr anna tells me tonight that npr runs a piece about how poets make a living. guess what. money's not got thru poetry alone. it appears in order to support the obsessions of reading/writing poets must have a day job. so the story is about a poet who also works in the financial industry. okay, i'm sold. i don't need to be convinced on the necessity of having a day job. i am a poet with a day job. instead of getting on my high horse and bitch about how academia is probably not the healthiest choice as a day job to make for every poet i just wonder why npr didn't search online a bit and find out that there's a host of writers who do things other than writing as their primary source of income.

and if it's not about money than what is it about anyway? should the topic simply be moot as working -- like in day jobs, or graveyard or swing shift jobs -- poets explode the myth that the only relevant work for a poet is teaching. not that i have anything against teaching. far from it. at any rate, the other popular myth is of a poet who is above the needs of cash and would rather starve in his/her garret than plug into the daily commute toward the office or assembly line in the effort to feed the family and pay the mortgage. ay carrumba! so if it ain't about money than why is douglas rothschild -- whose marvelous book theogony [subpress 2009] that i'm currently reading -- seen counting stacks of cash in his author's photograph which you can see by clicking here.