09-09-2013, 11:40 AM
Hi Jerry, thanks for the feedback. The cat line was intended as a bit of irony after "a poet cannot feed his family"... but maybe that's just my anti-cat prejudice showing through 
Those who complain that poetry is dead are usually the ones who've killed it, in my experience. No, we can't do it to make a living -- but isn't that a damn shame? People pay a fortune for utterly useless gadgets to distract them from reality and t-shirts with slogans on so that they don't have to think of anything to say on their own. I don't write for poets, I write for blokes at the pub or breastfeeding mothers or kids who have nothing better to do.
As for those 2 million writers in the US... well, I tend to think that too many people consider poetry easy to write without ever having read any, and that's part of why the rest of the population thinks poetry is rubbish.
Those who complain that poetry is dead are usually the ones who've killed it, in my experience. No, we can't do it to make a living -- but isn't that a damn shame? People pay a fortune for utterly useless gadgets to distract them from reality and t-shirts with slogans on so that they don't have to think of anything to say on their own. I don't write for poets, I write for blokes at the pub or breastfeeding mothers or kids who have nothing better to do.
As for those 2 million writers in the US... well, I tend to think that too many people consider poetry easy to write without ever having read any, and that's part of why the rest of the population thinks poetry is rubbish.
It could be worse