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IT AIN'T ALWAYS SO EASY
Folder:
THE DRUNKENING
It ain’t always so easy
to be a poet
when you gotta worry
about readings
and trying to get published
and more often than not
the rewards you reap
are purely intrinsic
and people laugh at you
and mock you
for being such
a gullible fool
but what else could you do?
Probably nothing
and that’s why you persist.
Wallace Stevens was an
Wallace Stevens was an insurance lawyer who became a vice president of the Hartford Insurance company. W.C. Williams was a pediatrician. Paul Claudel was a career diplomat, reachng the rank of Ambassador (to Japan; and then to the United States). I left high school wishing that poets could have it easy. Stevens taught me, among so many other things, that a day job, a career outside academia, was not antithetical to poetry and, in fact, was good for it. He sometimes referred to poets who were professors as "kept men."
Starward
Burroughs was an
Burroughs was an exterminator. Kerouac worked on a loading dock. Not all poets and novelists live in the ivory tower.
“Kept Men”
Priceless. ~S~
Yep, Pop Stevens could really
Yep, Pop Stevens could really turn a phrase---on the written page or, as they told me at school, in conversation.
Starward