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Poets' Odd Jobs

poets.org

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Re: Poets' Odd Jobs

#21

Post by ioblomov »

ubertaco wrote: post #10
shove wrote: post #3

We poets walk amongst you on HN also. Our poems aren’t very good, but then our code isn’t either ;)

I wrote one once that I tried to also express using bad UML, as a sort of artistic experiment. It was...not great. I still think the work was a decent expression of my emotional state at the time, even if the UML-ified version sucked. (but then, _a lot_ of UML sucks, so....)

Reminds me of Norvig’s PowerPoint of the Gettysburg address (not strictly poetry, but certainly some of the most poetic prose in English rhetoric)…

http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm

Re: Poets' Odd Jobs

#23

Post by dhosek »

leoh wrote: post #17
scop wrote: post #4

This 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,’ h…

I heard a story once about Glass driving someone in a taxi and the passenger saw his license and said what an interesting coincidence, he was on his way to see a concert of music by a man named Philip Glass. I don’t remember if Glass revealed his identity or not.

Re: Poets' Odd Jobs

#25

Post by dhosek »

KittenInABox wrote: post #9

I'm actually more curious what current poets do.

You can get an interesting sampler by picking up a recent Best American Poetry and looking at the bios in the back. Some are academics, but there are also doctors, lawyers, accountants, and so forth. I had a long-running project which attempted to rank graduate creative writing programs by their alumni’s appearances in the prize anthologies and one interesting byproduct was collecting a lot of author bios. I think the bios for those who I could confirm had no graduate creative writing degree or could not find evidence of one were the most interesting.

https://creativewritingmfa.info/rankings/Nograduatecreativew...

https://creativewritingmfa.info/rankings/unknown.html

Re: Poets' Odd Jobs

#26

Post by dhosek »

There’s a passage in A Moveable Feast where Hemingway recounts an attempt to solicit funds to get T. S. Eliot out of the bank so he could focus on his poetry. I don’t think that succeeded, but Eliot eventually moved to an editorial position at the publisher Faber and Faber.

Re: Poets' Odd Jobs

#27

Post by dvirsky »

namenotrequired wrote: post #20

There 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

IIRC Leonard Cohen started performing his poems as a singer to make a living.

Re: Poets' Odd Jobs

#28

Post by dvirsky »

KittenInABox wrote: post #9

I'm actually more curious what current poets do.

I know/knew a few, they usually balance things like teaching, magazine writing, maintaining social media accounts for brands, copywriting for ads, and tech jobs.

Re: Poets' Odd Jobs

#29

Post by gnulinux »

julian_t wrote: post #13

Philip 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.

My favorite contemporary composer.

When you support yourself through odd jobs, you can make bolder artistic statements, and show a middle finger to the art world, if you will. When an artist is a professor/teacher whose job is to teach the tradition in the mainstream way, they end up being immensely conservative. Just look at someone like Schoenberg who is -- of course -- considered an iconoclast by the academic art elite but his music is an extremely conservative extension of Western counterpoint and late German Romanticism in a very predictable way: make it more harmonically adventurous/experimental within the 12EDO framework... It's been everyone's go-to since forever, I mean Chopin made a fortune (and a mountain of novel piano music) off of it. Schoenberg simply refused to see what was right in front of his eyes, even though he clearly had gigantic artistic talent, spirit, and motivation (he is also one of my favorite composers, so I'm biased, granted). I really think teaching is not very compatible for artists who first and foremost want to be artists. Someone who wants to create, first and foremost, something new, profound, and personal... Of course, you'll find countless people who'll disagree with me staunchly...

Re: Poets' Odd Jobs

#30

Post by 082349872349872 »

circlefavshape wrote: post #5

Philip Larkin: librarian Wasn't an odd job though, he had a pretty good career as I understand it

  File that in the Staff Picks nooks
  As one nine six dash three
  (though not at all LOC) -
  Between the end of the "Chatterley" books
  And the Beatles' "Please, Please Me"
I remember hearing librarians described as "people who can find stuff, not only when it has been filed correctly, but also when it's been mis-shelved or just plain dropped behind something else."

(Note that Zweig puts the beginning of sexual intercourse at 1918; does every generation think their kids invented it?)

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