poetry as a career?  you gotta be fucking kidding me.  poetry is an obsession, a way, in the phrase of auden, of happening, a mouth.  the greatness of poetry lies in its utter uselessness.  like the universe - if i may be so bold - it just is & is a great good for it being so.  be obsessed with poetry.  be nuts.  let's go crazy.  but not with the notion that it be a career.  poetry is not an occupation, as pablo neruda said it was.  but a life in poetry.  poetry as a way of life.