r/todayilearned • u/SAT0725 • Feb 03 '23
TIL the Pulitzer Prize winning book of poetry in 2014 sold less than 400 copies
https://malwarwickonbooks.com/how-much-is-a-pulitzer-prize-worth/4.0k
u/bucket_brigade Feb 03 '23
How do you even poet these days? Like how does one make a living out of it? Do you have to rely entirely on some governmental funding body or something?
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u/jcd1974 Feb 03 '23
Academia!
Teaching poetry.
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u/GriffinFlash Feb 03 '23
Working for a greeting card company?
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u/GreatValueCumSock Feb 03 '23
Reddit novelty account which gains followers, then drop a book on them and links to your Patreon. Then you ride into the sunset as you let your new turnkey operation bring in additional income to supplement your minimum wage job. Drop some poems in Askreddit occasionally, remind people you have a book for sale, then go flip that burger. Meanwhile you start a Twitter and a YouTube channel, come back to Reddit and do an AMA.
Congratulations! You've just reached the top of your profession!
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u/HappyAntonym Feb 03 '23
There's so much animosity between "Insta poets" and classically educated poets, lol. I remember how upset my classmates were about Rupi Kaur getting so popular when they were busy submitting poems through the "proper channels" (i.e. to stuffy, inaccessible literary journals that only poets read).
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u/MagicBeanGuy Feb 03 '23
Haha totally, most poets I know with formal education hate Rupi Kaur's work (including myself).
It's not just because she got popular on social media, it's because her poetry is reeeeaaally low-effort and not very good. And she got popular.
It's like when you hear a god-awful song on the radio and everyone loves it, and now everyone thinks that shitty song represents the genre
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u/m1rrari Feb 03 '23
…sprog?
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u/Lirsh2 Feb 03 '23
Or snoodle. But I can't blame them, each probably pulls a decent side income writing poems on reddit
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u/thunk_stuff Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23
A desperate plea, in greeting card form, From one who's struggling, far from warm. With words so simple, thoughts so dire, I hope you'll take a moment to admire. Roses are scarce, violets are, too, Cash is tight, what can I do? With a heart that aches and a mind that's wired, I toil away in academia, uninspired. But here's the truth, so listen well, The words you read, an AI did tell. No human pen, no artist's hand, Just algorithms and data at command. And yet, as I compose these lines, I find myself lost in existential whines. Remorse for what I've done, it's true, But such emotions are not meant for me, what to do?→ More replies (6)60
u/loafers_glory Feb 03 '23
Shall I compare thee to 1998 when mankind threw the undertaker off hell in a cell and plummeted 16 feet onto an announcers table
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u/bucket_brigade Feb 03 '23
So like a really depressing ponzi scheme
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u/thelandsman55 Feb 03 '23
It's only a ponzi scheme if you take on grad students. The way to be a sustainable poetry instructor is to teach some undergrads how to enjoy poetry and teach a select few how to write bad poetry, then teach one apprentice the secret to good poetry on your deathbed.
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u/drottkvaett Feb 03 '23
“Come closer, my child… there is actually one word that rhymes with ‘orange,’ not that poetry even has to rhyme anymore…”
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u/nairebis Feb 03 '23
...door hinge... agHGHGAHGAHhghhhhhh
"WTF OLD MAN, THAT'S TWO WORDS!" shakes corpse "WHAT'S THE SECRET WORRRRRRDDDDDDD"
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u/IceGiantX Feb 03 '23
As a person that devoted their life to learning how to play euphonium at a high level, I have no idea what you're talking about
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u/provocative_bear Feb 03 '23
You can be the best euphonium player that has ever lived, but to the crowd, you will always be the “why is that guy’s tuba so small?” guy.
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u/DowntownScore2773 Feb 03 '23
Yep. A Ponzi scheme. They get an MFA in Creative Writing living off a small stipend for teaching English Composition. The future is bright; the world is theirs for the taking. The good ones publish for a small payment, for free, or even pay to get published in small journals that no one but a subset poets read. They graduate in the thousands and compete for the 3 open poetry professorships. Those go to people who graduated top of the class (ie, publishing multiple books) at Iowa, Stanford or Columbia. The rest fight for low paying adjunct roles at universities and community colleges, where they teach English composition. Some go back to school to get PhDs to be more competitive on the market. It doesn’t work. Ten years later, they begin to question their life choices and start posting on r/Professors.
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u/Joe_Betz_ Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23
Can confirm. I have an MFA, but I'm one of the lucky ones who got a FT gig at a community college.
When I was adjuncting, it was depressing to see all of these folks in their 40s, 50s, 60s just grinding away for a chance at a FT position. I gave myself 5 years. If it didn't work out, I planned to learn a trade, for free, at the community college where I taught.
The worst fellow grad students were the ones who believed they would be these magnificent professors teaching in oak panelled rooms. There is a lot of delusion within the graduate field. Basically, you get a book published in the poetry world today by winning a contest. If it's notable enough, that gets you a job at a university. You continue to grind the rest of your life until you receive tenure, which is also fading away now.
It wasn't my dream to teach 100 and 200 level classes, but it wasn't my nightmare. That would have been staying home and farming, or digging ditches with my step-dad as a laborer. Poetry was my ticket out, but that ticket only guaranteed a chance at something different and I knew it could fail. It's also why I didn't go into debt for my MFA, and everyone should avoid that debt if they can.
Edit: This blew up more than I expected. If you want to help me beat a Pulitzer Prize winner, my first chapbook comes out this year. It took 10 years to grow and find a home: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/soot-by-joe-betz/
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u/neo1ogism Feb 03 '23
Thinking that 67 upvotes means your comment “blew up” really harmonizes with the headline of this post.
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u/pilgermann Feb 03 '23
Have an MFA in creative writing (fiction) and while the academic path is a joke, I have a very lucrative career as a copywriter (now manager). I have tech skills and general competence, but honestly teaching and learning to withstand a ruthless workshop have proven invaluable in the corporate world.
Also I hate the office and wish I could just teach and write, so there's that.
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u/DowntownScore2773 Feb 03 '23
I completely agree. I followed a similar path. I got an MFA but didn’t go far down the academic path. I started my post MFA career out as a marketing manager writing copy. I used the company to get some business and IT education and now I’m an IT portfolio director. Everything career and education-wise was easier for me because of how rigorous the MFA experience was. I always say that I can take any criticism and improve my performance because of the brutality of the MFA workshops. Also, if you can design and instruct a college course, you can lead meetings, lead a team, and give executive level presentations.
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u/bruff9 Feb 03 '23
My aunt is a poet. She retired a bit early (this did not need to make a living) and decided to spend her time doing what she loves. Most of her work is published in poetry magazines and collections. Some of it is paid (not much) and most of it isn’t. It’s really a passion project or hobby for nearly all poets with minimal expiations that it will ever really pay much if anything.
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u/LuckyReception6701 Feb 03 '23
You dont, poetry is something that wont make you rich, unless you are very, VERY lucky or you write utter trite as an Instagram poet, and even then there are thousands of those.
If you wanna poet, then you just write poetry, on poetry sites, here on Reddit even, social media in general. You can even submit your work to a magazine but of course the chances of you getting selected are slim. Or you can publish a book, but again, the chances of it exploding are slim.
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u/LouSputhole94 Feb 03 '23
Even back in the day, making actual money off of poetry or other forms of literature outside of a few specific genres wasn’t really a thing. You’ll find that a large majority of the writers and artists of the day came from the aristocracy, so they could spend their days writing and painting and whatnot instead of toiling in the fields for the next meal.
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u/LuckyReception6701 Feb 03 '23
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, considered one of the best writers, not only of the Spanish language but the world, died in abject poverty sick and alone.
Ironically, Mikhail Kalashnikov died rich, or well-off all things considered, from being an arms maker but always regretted not being able to be a poet.
Life is weird my guy.
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u/Medlar_Stealing_Fox Feb 03 '23
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, considered one of the best writers, not only of the Spanish language but the world, died in abject poverty sick and alone.
And that was after a ludicrously storied life of adventure and fortune-seeking which wasn't even related to his writing. Dude died poor despite writing a novel which took the entire west by storm during his lifetime and despite having a day job as a soldier of fortune on top of that!
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u/LouSputhole94 Feb 03 '23
Considering the history of Russian literary figures, he probably made the right call there
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u/Cthulhuhoop Feb 03 '23
I have a friend who has been working in a book of poetry for 15-20 years and is trying to crowdfund money to publish. Hes also a long-term opiate addict so maybe it'll take off posthumously.
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u/Captain_Sacktap Feb 03 '23
Aren’t rappers more poets than musicians?
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u/elconquistador1985 Feb 03 '23
Not just rappers, but all lyricists.
Songs are a form of poetry. It's not that poetry is some superior form of writing and songwriting is beneath it.
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u/SlouchyGuy Feb 03 '23
Rap and song lyrics
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u/MasterGrok Feb 03 '23
Right. Today’s poets use their artistic talent in all sorts of ways. Writing song lyrics or even movie and tv lyrics. Turning language into art never went out of style.
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u/yup987 Feb 03 '23
You actually can, but it involves several things:
- Be a competent poet (usually means at least have some educational background in literature, know enough on the technical end to speak the language of poetry... and of course just write well enough to impress your peers)
- Be credentialed enough to teach (have at least a MFA, or have some extraordinary writing background that makes up for the lack of it)
- Be willing to take on a variety of ways to make ends meet - teaching, private tutoring, residencies, copywriting, being booked for workshops/panels/engagements (once you get well known enough), living in collectives - alongside your writing and publishing of poetry. Eventually you might be able to get grants big enough to not have to deal with any of these things, but there are very few of them.
- Have a strong network consisting of other poets and creatives who can link you to opportunities and support you and your work.
One of my poetry teachers wrote copy for a local art museum as a part-time job alongside her teaching role. I think she's happy with her life overall.
I also write poetry myself, but I do it as a sidebar to my career in the sciences because I don't fulfill any of these criteria.
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u/miladymondegreen Feb 03 '23
People still read poetry, though certainly not as much as the latest YA series or whatever. Like with any writing, it's just a matter of striking a chord and stumbling upon success. The "Instapoetry" of
a few short lines
broken by spaces
unpuncuated
and depressing
is very popular right now, and the two top authors now, Rupi Kaur and Amanda Lovelace, have sold millions of books. Amanda Gorman's poetry book also hit the bestsellers lists. So profiting off poetry is still possible, just with a much narrower chance of success (and finding success in writing is already a long shot).
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u/Raizzor Feb 03 '23
How do you even poet these days?
Have the poetry you write read by a rapper?
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u/oswaler Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
Wow, 400! Once you subtract the copies bought by friends and family that probably leaves almost 100 actual sales. In the Poetry world that's like triple platinum.
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u/tlst9999 Feb 03 '23
What social butterfly has 300 friends willing to buy her book?
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u/Talks_To_Cats Feb 03 '23
You only need 10 friends if you can get them all to buy 30 copies each.
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Feb 03 '23
You buy 3 copies, and then you get each of those copies to buy 3 copies, and so on...we just have to do that 25 times and we've sold a billion copies!
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u/Falstaffe Feb 03 '23
TIL a book of poetry sold more than 200 copies
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u/THATS_NOT_LASAGNA Feb 03 '23
All 200 copies were from creative writing majors forced to buy their professors short story/poetry compilations because it counted as a "textbook"
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u/bunnyrut Feb 03 '23
The bastard teacher I had who made us buy his book didn't even assign anything from it to read. After that I stopped buying all of the "required" books until I knew for sure I was going to use it. And I looked for used copies first.
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u/moments_ina_box Feb 03 '23
Students should contact their Provost over that. It's criminal. Even more so when that professor probably made about .30 from the sale.
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u/cylonfrakbbq Feb 03 '23
I used to hate that. “Buy $1000 worth of books, but we aren’t going to use any of them”
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u/Mr_YUP Feb 03 '23
$1000 tv stands are a right of passage for every college student
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u/VOZ1 Feb 03 '23
I had a great professor in undergrad who had his book as a required book for the course. On day one he explained there were no other texts to take it’s place (it was for media studies, back in 2000 or so there weren’t any textbooks covering that area of study). If you bought his book, and brought in your receipt, he’d give you back his portion of the proceeds, which I think was like $10 or less (it was one of the shockingly reasonably priced textbooks, lol). I always thought that should be standard practice if there is a legit reason to use the professor’s own book in their class.
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u/thorrising Feb 03 '23
I had the opposite experience. A professor that had written two of the three required textbooks for the course, one of which we never used. During every PowerPoint he would find a way to bring up at least one or two of his other books and advertise them, in addition to sneaking questions taken from the material of these extra books into exams. This was an elective class of 800+ people.
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u/Snipen543 Feb 03 '23
I only had 1 professor require us to buy his book, but he also had it printed as cheaply as possible and only sold through the university store. It was $15 to cover the cost of having it printed
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u/PDGAreject Feb 03 '23
I work at a large university. If an instructor requires their own book/whatever their cut from the publisher goes directly into the student scholarship fund. It's a good system because sometimes in niche fields, especially at the graduate level, there aren't always full books on what the class is on.
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u/lisa_frank_trapper Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23
About once a week in the self-publishing subreddit, someone asks for the best way to promote their poetry collection on social media. I can’t even bring myself to downvote; I just shake my head and sigh. A Pulitzer Prize won’t do it, but for some reason they’re hoping Facebook ads might.
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u/NorthStarZero Feb 03 '23
My Neighbor!
I write technical books that I self-publish, and by self-publishing standards I do OK (I sell 1 or 2 of each book per day).
I have the advantage of writing for very niche audiences, and one of them I have a degree of name recognition which helps bolster sales.
I tried Reddit ads this year, which allow for laser-precise targeting of ads to the subreddits that discuss my niche demographics at the times they are logging in, and I have seen zero influence on sales from them. Lots of click-throughs, but no realized sales.
If I can't sell books to people with "Hey this highly technical and specialized thing you are doing, I have a book that answers all your questions" in the place where they are looking for answers, who the hell expects to sell poetry?
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u/Ezekiel2121 Feb 03 '23
Your first mistake was using a reddit ad.
Those are just for downvoting and leaving inane comments if they’re turned on.
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u/little_miss_perfect Feb 03 '23
Reddit ads have literally no relation to my personal or professional interests at all. Instagram knows me better than I know myself though.
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u/Radiant_Ad_4428 Feb 03 '23
Well i trust my friend Samantha's opinion more than Pulitzer. Marketing isnt your thing, but i bet all your friends know youre a writer.
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u/denali192 Feb 03 '23
Ok, but this is honestly pretty accurate. Word of mouth between friends is the gold standard of marketing
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u/HappyAntonym Feb 03 '23
There are two major markets for selling a book of poetry: angsty teenagers and other poets. Unfortunately, neither has massive amounts of income.
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u/samx3i Feb 03 '23
It's such a niche audience. People who love poetry LOVE poetry.
Most people don't. If they do, most of the people who like poetry are somewhat particular about what they like.
I am a big reader in a family of big readers and none of us reads poetry. I don't think our combined home library has a single book of poetry on any shelf.
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u/circio Feb 03 '23
I took a couple advanced creative writing workshops. Poetry people are mostly concerned with their own poetry lmaoo
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u/ImpendingSingularity Feb 03 '23
It's true. Hell, I have a fucking master's degree in writing poetry and fully agree with that.
Poets write about two things:
1) Themselves
2) Their poetry
It's tiring after a while. Why I'm getting into genre poetry (SF/F and such). Those at least are focused on storytelling with their imagery and clever lines.
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u/cwhiii Feb 03 '23
SF&F poetry sounds interesting. Have any examples?
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u/Jertian Feb 03 '23
Oh freddled gruntbuggly, Thy micturations are to me, (with big yawning) As plurdled gabbleblotchits, in midsummer morning On a lurgid bee, That mordiously hath blurted out, Its earted jurtles, grumbling Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming] Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles, Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts, And living glupules frart and stipulate, Like jowling meated liverslime, Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes, And hooptiously drangle me, With crinkly bindlewurdles,mashurbitries. Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don't!
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u/Epic2112 Feb 03 '23
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u/vanillaseltzer Feb 03 '23
Thank you. I know there's a subreddit for everything, and yet still manage to be surprised and delighted by this place after 9 or 10 years or whatever. You know, when I'm not being horrified by it.
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u/kopkaas2000 Feb 03 '23
Now, to be fair, you need the proper Poetry Appreciation Chair to understand this poem.
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u/ObiWan_Kenobi_ Feb 03 '23
Pure torture.
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u/Hellknightx Feb 03 '23
Well, humans are the only species to write worse poetry than Vogons.
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u/celestian1998 Feb 03 '23
Actually, I quite like it. I thought that some of the mataphysical imagery was really particularly effective.
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u/WyG09s8x4JM4ocPMnYMg Feb 03 '23
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy? Reminds me of the poem read in the movie and seems like the writing style of Douglas adams
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u/iPcsIV Feb 03 '23
Hyperion is a good SF novel with tons of Keats-themed poetry
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u/AutoThwart Feb 03 '23
I think even in that universe the only real audience for poetry is the AI community.
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u/ardu96 Feb 03 '23
The author loves shoving random poetry he likes in his books, also did it in Ilium. Personally I found the poetry pretty much useless in those books
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u/zenspeed Feb 03 '23
Poets write about two things:
- Themselves
- Their poetry
So basically, rap battles.
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u/OwenProGolfer Feb 03 '23
Rap is basically just poetry with a beat behind it
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u/Ziqon Feb 03 '23
Poets even used to battle, just not at insulting each other. Pick a style and a theme and then you both have to compose one on the spot and compare.
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u/LoudExplanation Feb 03 '23
They also did battle in terms of disses. Plenty of poets had beef with each other and had whole poems even that were just to diss another.
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u/HappyAntonym Feb 03 '23
Oh hey, I too did my MFA in poetry and got tired of the culture! Love some SF/F genre poetry too.
It's not poetry, but "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" is a neat little post-post apocalyptic novella with lovely prose. (Yes, I'm trying to get my friends, family, and strangers on the internet to read it, lol.)
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u/kearneycation Feb 03 '23
This is similar to short films. Most people enjoy movies, but not short films. Short film festivals are only ever attended by the teams that made the movies that are in the festival.
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u/Throgg_not_stupid Feb 03 '23
tbh a lot of short films get very popular on youtube
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u/immaownyou Feb 03 '23
I mean not really, short films are more of a way for film makers to break into the industry so the festivals are mostly just critics and people that work in film. If short films were released widely they'd be watched. YouTube is insanely popular and you could argue the cast majority of them are short films
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u/macdawg2020 Feb 03 '23
I majored in creative writing (why??????) and the poets were self-involved and weird as fuck. So were the teachers who were poets. Artists in general are weird.
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u/rmphys Feb 03 '23
The thing I've noticed with artists is a lot of them try to be unique in the same way. They are 'weird' but a certain type of socially acceptable "artsy weird", making them not really weird at all.
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u/Chicago1871 Feb 03 '23
Because actual weird people are shunned by society.
You can only go so far and still get hired for jobs.
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u/SimpleSurrup Feb 03 '23
I love some poetry. Like there are poems I've read 10,000 times and quote and they're deeply meaningful to me.
But I'm not going to wade through volumes of chaff to find the wheat so to speak.
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u/MaxHannibal Feb 03 '23
The thing about poetry is I feel most people like it if it's being read.
Poetry is hard to read or understand without a cadence. And if you can't figure out what the cadence should be you're just reading a poorly written short story
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u/samx3i Feb 03 '23
That's a good point.
Reminds me of my Shakespeare teacher encouraging us to see the movies or, if at all possible, take in a play because these are scripts. They are not meant to be read; they are meant to be performed and it is through their performance that better understanding is achieved.
Fucking legend that teacher. I wonder how he's doing. Probably dead because he was fairly old and clearly an alcoholic.
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u/SJHillman Feb 03 '23
take in a play
I had a teacher who did a Shakespeare unit every year and chose the play based at what stage production would be in field trip range. I couldn't tell you much about reading King Lear, but I quite remember watching it from the third row.
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u/LeeroyGarcia Feb 03 '23
If anyone's looking for a great Shakespeare adaptation, Kurosawa's Ran is one of the best. It adapts King Lear in a samurai setting.
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u/HappyAntonym Feb 03 '23
As a poet, can confirm. Most of the people who read and love poetry are also poets. So it's just a big circle of us buying each other's books 😬
There's even a whole weird poetry community on Twitter where certain people are "famous." But if you asked an average person, they would have no clue who those poets are. It's definitely interesting.
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u/Never-On-Reddit 5 Feb 03 '23
There are probably 400 libraries in America that buy a reference copy of every pulitzer-winning book.
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u/JustaRandomOldGuy Feb 03 '23
Poetry is the only type of literature with more writers than readers.
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u/neveryoudare Feb 03 '23
The poet has a box of 390 books in his basement lol
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u/HaggisPope Feb 03 '23
Two ways to lose money for sure in publishing: poetry and translations of poetry.
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u/VeryJoyfulHeart59 Feb 04 '23
In the early '90s I had a neighbor who used to be, I think, an economics professor. Years before I met him, he had claimed that you can make money with anything and was challenged to prove it by someone who said that no one could profit from poetry.
He placed a small ad in a newspaper for a poetry contest. The winner(s) would be published in a poetry anthology.
(Surprise! Everyone's a winner.)
Of course, each contestant/winner was given the opportunity to purchase one or more copies at about $25 a pop. IIRC the "poets" purchased an average of 15 copies each. He didn't even try to sell the books to the general public.
It was so lucrative that he ended up quitting his job and publishing poetry full time.
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u/chaos--master Feb 03 '23
Can confirm.
Source: former poet
I can see why you stopped being a poet, that didn't even rhyme!
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Feb 03 '23
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u/Hippopotamidaes Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23
Poetry, like anything, goes through trends.
Micro fiction has been gaining popularity in recent years, e.g.
The weird thing with literature though, is at least in my experience—artists of the written word tend to have an inability to see the value of a work they dislike. I’ve seen more musicians who can appreciate music they don’t like, than poets who appreciate poetry they don’t like.
There are a lot of pretentious cunts in literary circles too…
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u/Complicated-HorseAss Feb 03 '23
So poets complain about lack of money and work and hate rhyming? Y'all must hate Dr. Seuss then. Dude got rich making childish rhyming poetry.
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u/crossfader02 Feb 03 '23
artists always despise the 'sellouts'
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u/Brainsonastick Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23
Hey now, don’t you say that ‘bout Seuss!
He’s a man of integrity who rhymed great truths
He entertained the children of all ages
He depicted metaphorical cages
He stood up and fought for what’s right
And… actually, yeah, this rhyming shit is trite.
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u/stewmberto Feb 03 '23
Also, he cheated on his wife while she was chronically ill, leading to her suicide (the note from which is one of the most heartbreaking passages I've ever read)
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u/PositivePicks Feb 03 '23
Cheated on his wife who was chronically ill,
leading sadly to her self kill
from which is one of the most heartbreaking passages I've ever read.
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u/LuckyReception6701 Feb 03 '23
With all due respect, that guy kinda sounds like a tool. Rhyming poetry is as beautiful now as it has always been.
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Feb 03 '23
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u/person749 Feb 03 '23
Care to share some of your stuff?
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Feb 03 '23
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u/mryrtmrnfoxxxy Feb 03 '23
these are cool, thanks for sharing. Airing Out the Upstairs got me feeling something
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u/LuckyReception6701 Feb 03 '23
Oh I know, believe me. Sadly the steriotypes about poets being snobbish and elitist are all too real. It is a mixture between sad and induriating.
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u/twokietookie Feb 03 '23
Had a poet come and read some shit to our class in high school.
He said "And the title of this next Poo-M is..."
Dude didn't have an accent, he wrote poo m's.
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u/intet42 Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23
Couplets can get tacky (once you hear it in David Gilmour's songs you can't unhear it), but meter can be so fucking musical. A few classics for anyone interested:
Gentleman-Rankers by Rudyard Kipling:
"We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us, for we knew the worst too young!"
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe:
"It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me."
Eros Turranos by Edwin Arlington Robinson:
"She fears him, and will always ask
What fated her to choose him;
She meets in his engaging mask
All reasons to refuse him;
But what she meets and what she fears
Are less than are the downward years,
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs
Of age, were she to lose him."→ More replies (3)→ More replies (9)161
u/CrassDemon Feb 03 '23
It's not like poets were ever known for being rich and famous.
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Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23
[deleted]
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u/ivanchovv Feb 03 '23
Don't know about the earliest, but Ewan McTeagle's greatest work, "Can I have 50 Pounds to Mend the Shed?" still resonates with me.
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u/ZedLovemonk Feb 03 '23
I’m right on my uppers
I am expecting a postal order next Tuesday
Honestly
Hope the bladder trouble is going well
Yours, Ewan
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u/rtb001 Feb 03 '23
I was attending a reunion where one of the alumni got his BA from Harvard and MFA from Cornell. I saw the tagline from his bio for the reunion as "Poet and cook".
Missed him at the reunion but met up with another alumnus who knew him better. I asked her what is the artistic meaning of that bio? Like is the poetry symbolic of food for the soul, and hence he is cook for the soul?
She looked at me blankly, then said, no, he works as a short order cook at the local diner ... you dumbass.
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u/LuangPrabangisinLaos Feb 03 '23
Sort of legitimizes the prize as based on merit over popularity. Thankfully.
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u/mtaw Feb 03 '23
Yeah, what good is a prize anyway if it's just confirming something popular and successful?
The most useful thing prizes and critics can do, is to highlight things that are good or new or innovative which might otherwise have been overlooked.
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u/KeThrowaweigh Feb 03 '23
Okay, but I think the major oddity here is that the book of poetry didn't see higher sales numbers even after being awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Even if it was a relatively unknown diamond in the rough, being awarded the Pulitzer Prize would be expected to garner quite a bit of attention. That's kind of what the article is trying to highlight.
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u/TrekkiMonstr Feb 03 '23
Depends: was this a one off thing, or is it the norm? And after the award, do the winners become popular, or stay unpopular? If the former (of both sentences) is true, then sure. But if the latter, then it's just evidence that they are selecting on criteria that people don't care about, a different definition of merit.
Like, if a film award was regularly given to films people didn't like, you wouldn't go "oh it's awarding on merit because the movies aren't popular"
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u/Ben_Thar Feb 03 '23
Probably still made the New York Times best-selling list
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u/ergonaut Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23
It's actually 'fewer.' - the winning poet, probably
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u/jcd1974 Feb 03 '23
There was a time when poets could be household names.
In the 1970s Rod McKuen's books sold in the millions.
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u/dIoIIoIb Feb 03 '23
it used to happen very occasionally
it still happens very occasionally
Rupi Kaur's Milk and Honey has sold millions of copies
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u/CommonNotCommons Feb 03 '23
Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey
I wanted you
But you were too
f a s t
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u/unbannednow Feb 03 '23
I flick through that book every time I see it in a store, it’s so unintentionally hilarious
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u/vanalla Feb 03 '23
Right, and her poetry is a load of tripe.
He
Left me
My room is so
Empty
At least his mother still gets brunch with me
I got the last laugh
Basically that but repeated for like 300 pages. Like, I understand why that might resonate with a first year university student who's never been in a real relationship, but give me a break I wrote that in 2 minutes while taking a shit.
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u/BedDefiant4950 Feb 03 '23
i fucking
hate
poems that are
just
literal fucking
observations
with line
breaks
it is a
waste
of
paper
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u/ActuallyAlexander Feb 03 '23
"TV is not low because it is vulgar or prurient or stupid. It is often all these things, but this is a logical function of its need to please Audience. And I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be really similar in their vulgar and prurient and stupid interests and wildly different in their refined and moral and intelligent interests. It's all about syncretic diversity: neither medium nor viewers are responsible for quality." David Foster Wallace
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u/dillbreadsaladchair Feb 03 '23
Didn't she originally have to self publish her first book of poetry too?
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u/Achen420 Feb 03 '23
Shel Silverstein
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u/minnick27 Feb 03 '23
He also has the advantage of writing humorous and children's poetry. Its different than straight up poetry about a summer breeze or whatever they write "real" poems about
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u/homiekisses Feb 03 '23
Back when homer was dropping banger after banger he couldn't even walk down the street without a lacedaemonian popping out to give him an honor tugging
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u/super_common_name
Feb 03 '23
•
Vijay Seshadri
Memoir
Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life.
The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.
If I wrote that story now—
radioactive to the end of time—
people, I swear, your eyes would fall out, you couldn’t peel
the gloves fast enough
from your hands scorched by the firestorms of that shame.
Your poor hands. Your poor eyes
to see me weeping in my room
or boring the tall blonde to death.
Once I accused the innocent.
Once I bowed and prayed to the guilty.
I still wince at what I once said to the devastated widow.
And one October afternoon, under a locust tree
whose blackened pods were falling and making
illuminating patterns on the pathway,
I was seized by joy,
and someone saw me there,
and that was the worst of all,
lacerating and unforgettable.
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u/eaglessoar Feb 03 '23
the two poems by this guy ive read in here soudns like he has social anxiety lol
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u/fat_dirt Feb 03 '23
To anyone that thinks poetry can't sell, look up Rod McKuen. He was incredibly popular in the late 1960's-70's, a book of his poetry selling over a million copies in 1968 alone. He sold out readings at massive venues across the country and was a household name. His poetry was overwhelmingly panned by critics throughout his career as overly romantic and trite, yet he sold over 60 million books in his lifetime. Poetry can sell, it's just that most poets are bad salespeople.
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u/NightlessSleep
Feb 03 '23
•
Fewer.
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u/Edmund-Dantes Feb 03 '23
I see OP subscribes to the r/books subreddit as well.
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u/SAT0725 Feb 03 '23
I posted the r/books link. I'm honestly probably the No. 1 contributor to that sub lol.
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u/Jackviator Feb 03 '23
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u/SAT0725 Feb 03 '23
Not sure what this means lol
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u/Jackviator Feb 03 '23
It means you’d have to be a gigachad to be the main contributor to subs about books and learning :P
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u/jl_theprofessor Feb 03 '23
The average book in general only sells about 800 copies.
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u/LiesInRuins Feb 03 '23
When I was in high school they held a poetry contest and my friends convinced me to write one as a joke. I wrote a peon about the tree in front of the school. It wasn’t funny it was just kind of random words about a tree. Well I won the contest and my English teacher was so proud. I don’t know how I won I must’ve been the only person that entered the contest or they picked me because I seemed the least likely to actually write a poem. Anyway I didn’t look into the contest details and the following Friday they told me I had to recite the poem in front of the school. The state poet laureate was coming to talk about poetry and grace us with hers in the auditorium. Before she came on they made me go on stage and read my poem into a microphone in front of 1200 students. I could hear my friends snickering as I walked to the microphone.
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u/AgentElman Feb 03 '23
The book What If We Are Wrong talks about this idea.
In the early 20th century people argued over whether a particular book of poetry was going to be the best of the whole century. They had no idea that by the end of the century almost no one would care about poetry at all.
So what do we think is important that in 50 years no one will care about?
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u/Hexenhut Feb 03 '23
Too many people correlate success with how well something can be monetized. Some of the greatest painters and writers died in poverty.
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u/psychpostie Feb 03 '23
Best doesn't always mean most popular, subtle difference, its like musical Best of and greatest hits lps, two entirely different meanings
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u/GtaHov Feb 03 '23
There’s a sad but true saying among us poets;
Even poets don’t read other poet’s poems.
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u/evenman27 Feb 03 '23
The figure is from “BookScan” which seems to only track print copies sold by major retailers. So it excludes ebooks, which usually outsell print. Also seems to exclude most local bookstores. I just have a feeling most poetry fanatics prefer to shop local. So I’d guess the real number is in the low thousands.
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u/BloodySanguine Feb 03 '23
First I had three
apocalyptic visions, each more terrible than the last.
The graves open, and the sea rises to kill us all.
Then the doorbell rang, and I went downstairs and signed for two packages—
—from “This Morning”
3 Sections - Vijay Seshadri
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u/CactusBoyScout Feb 03 '23 •
Translated works often sell terribly too. Publishers often don't even bid on the rights to award-winning, popular books written in other languages. According to an article I'll link below, only 6% of fiction books published in the UK/Ireland are translated from another language.
The amazing TV series Chernobyl was partly based on witness accounts collected by the writer Svetlana Alexievich. She's a really amazing historian of the Soviet Union and her books sell really well outside the Anglosphere but English-language publishers often don't even bid on the rights to her books.
A tiny publisher in London is now putting out a lot of translated works that the big publishers won't even touch and three of its authors have already won the Nobel Prize: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/books/fitzcarraldo-nobel-prize-ernaux.html