The Economics of Poetry (and the Future of Journalism?)

The Economics of Poetry (and the Future of Journalism?)

Poetry is alive and well. It thrives and pays better than ever before despite – not because of – a proliferation of MFA programs, quarterly journals, and literary prizes. To understand this, we must recognize poetry for what it is in essence, and for what it is today. When we do so, we’ll see where our poets are, and what they’re doing to make so much money. We’ll also understand why this conflicts with conventional understanding, and how the rebirth of journalism will invigorate our verse, and so our world.

To begin, poetry means “making”. What we make with or through poetry is nothing less than our world. Traditionally, this has entailed ordering perception by ordering sounds, words, and ideas. Poetry is not the only creative approach to life, but unlike the graphic and plastic arts, because it uses words poetry deals with ideas more explicitly than any other art form. Poetry directly verbalizes things to which other arts give color, shape, and texture – elements which we describe and consciously understand through words applied after the fact.

The basic method of poetic ordering is repetition. If rhyme and rhythm are just the repetition of sounds and stresses in interwoven patterns, poetic repetition of words, phrases, and themes are a scaled-up version of the same practice. If we are that which we choose to repeat, repetitive poetry provides a handle to both individual and social identities. In other words, any poem can provide ideas about what we are or want to become as individuals. It can also provide ideas about how we might interact as members of a society, and what the shared values of that society are or should be. This is the link between journalism and poetry. Journalism documents life, so deals with “are”. Poetry deals with idealized life, and “should be”.

Poetic repetition exists within single poems, and among the poems of a tradition. That is, in any one poem a poet may use sounds, syllables, words, and phrases for poetic effect to help form and refine ideas. Those ideas, and even the effects used to create them, may then be repeated across poems, across time, even across traditions. This is how poetry makes the world. Making the world is a big part of poetry’s social utility. The other part is introducing a sense of adventure into it (this is explored in “On Poetry”).

The key realization about the economics of poetry is that poets are makers. Professional makers prefer to use the best tool for the job. Utility tends to be their guiding principle. Like their fellows in other crafts, they master the tools of their craft, refine both tools and technique, and when necessary for progress, discard old tools and ways in favor of new. Sometimes, the way forward is found by a return to beginnings, either by elaborating on an overlooked strain, or remixing several old ones into something new. In any event, a maker tends to be less sentimental than utilitarian regarding choice of tools. Significantly, sentimentality in poetry is widely and rightly derided as poor craftsmanship.

For ages, literally, from the Stone Age through the Victorian Age, poets made the world by transmitting their vision of it through the individual voice. Essentially, the only technological changes directly relevant to poetry over this broad stretch of time were the proliferation of musical instruments for accompaniment, the development of writing, and the invention of the printing press. Radio might have furthered poetry per se – and did, after a fashion -- but the quick arrival of “talking pictures” gave it stiff competition, and continues to do so today.

Motion pictures added picture to the voice and music of traditional poetry. For artists concerned with making the world, the opportunity to enrich their work by adding a whole new dimension was not to be missed. For artists concerned with envisioning a world, the chance to do so literally, by adding picture to word and song, had to be taken. Makers who seek to produce the highest quality work will use the best tools and materials available. The 20th century offered poets – makers – a new tool in cinema, and most of the best of them took it up. For evidence, consider how the radio play died with the advent of television as writing talent followed the money to Hollywood. Consider as well that today we quote lines from movie scripts, rather than lines from poems.

When this talent shift occurred would be hard to pinpoint exactly, but somewhere between the Great Depression and the end of the Second World War seems likely, with Yeats, Eliot, and Frost marking the end of the line of poetry as it’s generally conceived. After that, for simple economic and artistic reasons, our great poets either went into film or returned, as in ages past, to songwriting.

Our great motion picture directors -- Coppola, Spielberg, and their peers (all whom are postwar babies who grew up in the golden years of television and Satyrday matinees) – are poets because through their art they make the world, not because they use a particular form. Instead of limiting themselves to traditional verse-based methods, these poets use the richest media available to most fully realize their vision and transmit it to their audience. Something similar can be said for our great songwriters, the difference being individual genius – the more auditory taking up music; the more visual, filmmaking.

One reason why poetry is in very good shape and pays very well today is that we have great poets who are making millions of dollars creating the world most of us more or less passively inhabit. The trick lies in recognizing where our poets are and what their poetry entails. The question is why the abandonment of spoken word poetry. Half of the answer has been given: a richer embodiment of artistic vision is possible with another toolset. The other half – the literally richer, economic half -- is money, fame, sex, and power.

Our best poets didn’t abandon verse simply for artistic reasons, despite valid ground for doing so. Instead, they were led to do so by a combination of artistic vision and worldly competition. Back in the day, when poets sang the tales of kings and conquerors, they competed against each other for places at court. They did so, as professionals, for pay and prestige. It also helped them get their songs out. In doing so, their work set the standards of the day, thereby making the world.

For an economic analysis of poetry, it doesn’t matter that today we tend to find more beauty and authenticity in the unconventional work of any era, or that most contributions to any “school” of poetry are mediocre. That’s what we expect, statistically. Instead, what matters is that a standard is set, and competition to exceed that mark and set a new standard ensues. Thomas Kuhn noted the same happens in the sciences. In both arenas, the rewards of winning are fame, fortune, sex, and power.

This is the simplest of economic and biology, and was case until the arrival the printing press. After that, growing literacy in the lower classes opened a new poetic market. Rather than having to master what filtered out of a stale court in order to move up and gain the chance to innovate, a poet could perform directly for the masses. The press launched a democratic revolution, in art as in politics, that cannot be overestimated. Initially invigorating, the democratic consciousness that literacy engendered is responsible for a large part of the low esteem in which verse is held today.

By the end of the 19th century, poetry was still a viable way to make a living, and one that brought the successful poet a reasonable measure of social esteem. Tennyson and Browning are examples. For that reason, it still drew talent. However, public education was spreading literacy far and wide, and poets and publishers took notice. There was money to be made, and it was far easier to turn five nickels than a quarter. A poetaster who might not have been published fifty or a hundred years earlier, but who could string a few salacious or sentimental rhymes together might earn as much as solid, second-tier poet who knew his metrics and allusions.

True, the coarser working-man’s poet might be fresh and authentic, giving voice to classes long kept mute. True, there might be real, fresh-hewn art here. Be that as it may, when those with long-honed skills find their skills outdated, they either grow bitter and starve as they are marginalized (literally forced to the barren margins) or they abandon their old field in favor of new, acquiring new skills as they go. So, when standards “fell”, much of our poetic talent looked elsewhere for employment.

They found in it in novels and drama, in radio and motion pictures. Literary talent moved to these forms earlier or later, but move it did, and it did so to get paid. So why does verse pay so poorly? The easy answer is that it gets paid what its worth, because without talented poets making good poetry, there’s little worth paying for, but this is circular. However, that circularity indicates the presence of a negative spiral, a sympathetic feedback loop that races, not quite to the bottom, but a mediocre steady state. Until something changes to draw talent back to verse, the situation will either get worse or remain in a period stagflation, a Keynesian equilibrium where all suffer.

The root cause of poetry’s economic demise is democracy. Not political democracy, or even a democracy of taste, but one of access. The simple fact is that not so long ago, poets needed demonstrable skill. They had to know rhymes and metrics and allusions. They had to be able to compose on the fly, like a jazz musician. They acquired these tools after long training, formal or informal. To some extent, this remains true today, but really only for those poets who’ve gone into singing, as the singer has to know a stock selection of cover tunes, and be able to perform them well enough for public approval. Because there are no publicly known “cover-poems” by which the public can measure a poet, all other versifiers (with the possible exception of slam artists) are in the same boat.

In other words, the man or woman on the street has – as far as anyone can tell – as much expertise in poetry as a real devotee of the craft: a native tongue, a literate brain, writing implements, and a little time. When “real” poetry looks like a sentence scrambled on the page, who can tell the difference between the hack and the pro? When “serious” poetry doesn’t sound “poetic”, and is darn near indecipherable who is the better poet, the office rhymer, or the MFA?

This is not a debate about the virtues of post-war poetry. There are none. It is what democracy of access means. When the man on the street feels he can do just as well, maybe better, than a “real” poet – and feels he has every right to think that way – why should he spend his hard earned cash on poetry? In this economic environment, very few will risk investing the bulk of their time, energy, and talent creating verse. The return is simply too low.

As a result, most of the talent flees elsewhere. This drives product quality down, and confirms the man-on-the-streets democratic notions. Those that stay tend to get defensive about their chosen medium, which puts a damper on creativity, and therefore quality. This happens to the few real talents, but even more so to those who moved up higher in the pecking order than they otherwise would have. They know instinctively that they are living atop a house of cards and get nasty when anyone attempts to address the emperor’s new clothes. They try to prop each other up with empty prizes, and restore both gates and gatekeepers using MFA programs, but certification never made a poet. Poets make themselves as they make the world.

What does this mean for poetry? Nothing, actually. Our poetic instincts are alive and well. The commercial jingle that’s easy to remember – that’s poetry. Maybe not good poetry, but more musical and easier to remember than anything out of a literary journal. For better or for worse, it helps make the world in a much more meaningful way that some opaque ramble in an obscure periodical read by very few ever will.

McDonalds creates more of the world with its “da-Dah, Dat-dat-Dah, I’m loving it” than any contemporary poem does, simply because it is memorable and applicable to a much wider range of people and situations, and has great allusive content. You can use it, when it impinges on your consciousness, as an honest expression of how you’re enjoying a beautiful morning, or as ironic commentary about corporate America. This richness of meaning, of manifold interpretation paired with melody and memorability, -- its mutability -- lends something poetic to a bit of advertising twaddle.

The same goes for that piece of rhymed office satire. It may galumph along, rose-red and violet-blue as it castrates the boss, but its author will be rewarded and remembered. Maybe she or he will get enough attention to keep writing, and eventually pen something pretty darn good for a wedding or a funeral, something that in a century two somebody will discover and anthologize.

For that matter, the horde of amateur internet poets puts the law of large numbers to work in favor of good verse. Enough man-hours, and something good will turn up . The trick will be finding it, but social networking may help. Of course, if it’s any good, it will likely be put to music and sold by the millions. Slam poetry is another sign of animal vitality. We don’t have to worry about poetry. It’s in our nature. We just have to look outside of convention to find it.

The root message here is that poets and poetry are relevant – they make the world, after all. They just don’t use naked verse to do it anymore. Verse poetry has reunited with song, in order to find its audience, change the world, and get paid. There is more real poetry in Gun’s & Roses “Sweet Child O Mine”, akin as it is to “Westron Wind” than anything written after Ginsburg’s “Howl”

If you don’t like that heavy metal ballad, pick a favorite from the Beatles or the Stones. Paul Simon’s “the bomb in baby carriage was wired to the radio” is better poetry than any I’ve read in Poetry these last three years, the proof being that I can remember it. If jazz is your thing, how about my all-time favorite “Beyond the Sea”? Need something a little grittier, listen to some early NWA or Public Enemy. I’ll put Michelle Shocked and Cheryl Crow against Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich any day.

Pick a famous band, from Aerosmith to ZZ Top, from Buddy Holly to Elvis to the Dixie Chicks, and you’ll find poetry. You’ll find it because out of all the bands out there – and like poets, there are thousands, these rose to the top against tough competition (unlike poets). These lyricists wrote for the court of public opinion, touched the heartstrings of millions, and were rewarded for it. Not extravagantly, mind you, but in keeping with what they provided. If they make millions, they really earn it. What’s the world worth?

This is true not only for the poets that practice accompanied verse, but those who mix it with cinema, or specialize in film. As multi-media artists, Laurie Anderson (Home of the Brave) or the Talking Heads (Stop Making Sense) are as good as any canonical poet, and for my money, offer the best poetry of the last quarter of the 20th century. Judy Garland may be saccharine in The Wizard of Oz, but she’s certainly as archetypal as Bogie was in Casablanca. I could go on as I did for the musicians, but surely you get the picture .

None will dispute that sex, fame, and fortune accompany musical or cinematic stardom, but what about power? Look at how Bono (U2) or any number of actors have parleyed celebrity status into positions at international conferences or on boards of directors for social action groups. World-making is serious business, and the real poets know it.

Poetry is relevant. Poetry is alive and well. Its social purpose is to create the world. It flows in the veins of the masses, across our airwaves and movie screens, and over the world-wide web. Poetry as an academic exercise among a cloistered order of journal contributors amounts to a ritualistic circle-jerking. Versification has become a sterile religious activity, divorced from the throb of life. As such, it is rightly shunned by those with talent, and consigned to poverty -- a condition which its devotees have adopted as a ascetic vow, in self-righteous pride.

The situation is almost the same in the world of journalism, as the democratizing power of the Internet – another technological change – puts amateurs on the same footing as professionals. Beyond this observation, I can't go as I simply don't know enough about the profession and economics of the news industry. But I think a comparison to poetry and its economic history might be valuable to journalists old and new.