Making It Commercially

This post was going to be a response to John Gallaher's post about an article by Micah Mattix's article Poetry and Subsidies which was partially in response to Tom Bethell's article in The American Spectator. But my response got a little to big for its britches so, since I haven't posted in a while, I decided to post my response here.

I honestly think, if Mattix is interpreting Bethell accurately, that Bethell is off kilter…as is Mattix. Sure prizes, subsidies, grants, lectureships and professorships may be bureaucratic and careerist in nature but who cares. Is the world that bad off having more poetry in it due to the prizes, subsidies, etc.?

Micah Mattix’s suggestion that there’s a possibility of “making it commercially” in poetry is pretty ridiculous. With the exception of a few poets who have achieved a little “commercial” success such as Ai, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Maya Angelou, poetry is not a profitable endeavor and thus using the phrase “making it commercially” feels asinine.

Unfortunately, like many contemporary arguments about the “decline of poetry,” I feel that Mattix assumes that poetry “is” waning before proving it “is” waning, which is to say, “poetry is waning” seems like one of his premises, while at the same time being his conclusion. This is probably confusing but suffice it to say, I am not convinced that poetry is in fact waning.

If the prizes, subsidies, grants, lectureships and professorships were reduced to reduce the amount of mediocre poetry wouldn’t this be similar to what Collins jokingly suggested a few years back: that the NEA pay poets to not write to reduce the mediocrity in contemporary poetry. This, in my opinion, seems to lead to elitism.

I like Mattix’s conclusion though, that critics need to do a better job of finding good poetry.

Ultimately though, I say who cares. These kinds of things tend to take care of themselves. Time causes the dross to rise to the surface and eventually it’s scraped off. But of course this may be too simplistic a conclusion and doesn’t mean that I believe thoughtful dialogue about the state of contemporary poetry shouldn’t exist.