I'm actually more curious what current poets do.
Creative writing teacher.
Poets' Odd Jobs
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: Poets' Odd Jobs
#12This reminds me of a book I recently enjoyed: Lost in the Cosmos: the Last Self Help Book by novelist Walker Percy. One of his best questions was on "the problem of re-entry", i.e. how does one go from plumbing the very depths of existence/meaning back to the mundane of standing in line to buy groceries. How does one "re-enter" "normal life"? The book doesn't so much as answer the question as make the reader ponder i…
Tangentially related, but I enjoyed the brr.fyi three-part series on re-entering "normal life" after a year at the South Pole:
https://brr.fyi/posts/redeployment-part-one
Re: Poets' Odd Jobs
#13Philip Glass, the composer, supported himself throughout his life as a cab driver and a plumber. There's a great story of him installing a dishwasher for the art critic of Time magazine.
Re: Poets' Odd Jobs
#14“While [Langston] Hughes was working at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., he saw poet Vachel Lindsay dining in the restaurant. Hughes slipped three poems under Lindsay’s plate, including his now-famous “The Weary Blues.” Impressed, Lindsay called for the busboy and asked who wrote the poems, and Hughes responded that he did. Lindsay read Hughes’s poems at a public performance that night and introduced him to publishers. The next day, a local newspaper ran an article about the “Negro busboy poet,” and reporters and diners flocked to meet him. The next year, Hughes published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues.”
Re: Poets' Odd Jobs
#15We poets walk amongst you on HN also. Our poems aren’t very good, but then our code isn’t either ;)
with our eyes wide and bright
on the orange site, we write
in curiosity, we find delight
here: a land of the bit and the byte
Re: Poets' Odd Jobs
#16I'm actually more curious what current poets do.
Cash trust fund checks.
Re: Poets' Odd Jobs
#17This reminds me of a book I recently enjoyed: Lost in the Cosmos: the Last Self Help Book by novelist Walker Percy. One of his best questions was on "the problem of re-entry", i.e. how does one go from plumbing the very depths of existence/meaning back to the mundane of standing in line to buy groceries. How does one "re-enter" "normal life"? The book doesn't so much as answer the question as make the reader ponder i…
Philip Glass supported himself as a plumber
>“I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo,” he says. “While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.”
https://kottke.org/18/04/philip-glass-i-expected-to-have-a-d...
Re: Poets' Odd Jobs
#18I'm actually more curious what current poets do.
I build and deploy business process automations to AWS using Python.
Re: Poets' Odd Jobs
#19“While [Langston] Hughes was working at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., he saw poet Vachel Lindsay dining in the restaurant. Hughes slipped three poems under Lindsay’s plate, including his now-famous “The Weary Blues.” Impressed, Lindsay called for the busboy and asked who wrote the poems, and Hughes responded that he did. Lindsay read Hughes’s poems at a public performance that night and introduced him t…
Vachel Lindsay himself took a couple of long-distance walking tours where he eschewed carrying money and would knock on strangers' doors each night to offer his poetry in exchange for food and shelter. His book about one of these tours is fascinating, it was a very different time in America: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67947
Re: Poets' Odd Jobs
#20There is also a group of poets who do live off their poetry, though many are more known by other terms such as "singer-songwriter", "rapper", etc