Conversation with Society about the Place of the Poet

“World of Poetry”
Final Paper


Conversation with Society about the Place of the Poet


“I want to be a baker* when I grow up;” this sentence puts a definite image into the head of it’s reader. We can see the hat, the poufs of flour in the air, the display case out in front of the bakery – maybe we can even smell the croissants. Perhaps not the most ambitious destiny for little Jimmy, but imagine another situation: “I want to be a poet when I grow up.” What image does that put into your head of the speaker? What image does that put into your head of the speaker in ten years? Surely the day of Shakespeare has passed and taken with it the minstrel rooster idea, a man pacing in chambers in tights and frilly frocks madly waving a quill around. When was the last time we saw a poet on the cover of Time Magazine? What does one look like?

A picture does emerge, though, when we try and put ourselves in the would-be poet’s shoes- a picture of an empty pair of shoes. “Who am I?” the poet asks; and who answers? The classics have only words for a response; perhaps a poet is nothing in particular, after all. Perhaps he is only words on a page. Here is a reason why poets seem to have so much trouble with society – even when they are doing poetry well they’re not likely to be convinced of it. Some see them as useless non-producing citizens- unlike the baker, whose worldly work we can smell from around the block. The problem with the poet is that his work is indefinite.

In his poem “Cortege,” Guillaume Apollinaire describes a procession which passed him. In the poem, he searches thoroughly for some sort of identity in the others he watches, but doesn’t find himself in the parade.

“One day
One day I waited for myself
I said to myself Guillaume it’s time you came
So I could know just who I am
I who know others…”

Despite the examples of life set out for him by everyone else who lives in the city, Guillaume has trouble seeing himself. He is not any of these people, though he loves them; who is he then? “…With a lyric step all those that I love came forward/ And I was not among them;” it isn’t that Guillaume doesn’t love himself, it’s that he can’t define himself. By the end of the poem, however, he does have an idea of himself, as something which was slowly built by the people of his procession.

Another problem posed by the indefinateness of the poet’s work is survival: food, water, shelter. The baker can sell his bread to the many hungry people; who hungers for words in that way? The poet has to bake up a whole new incredible baguette of words to sell it in the first place and even then has trouble finding a buyer. In 1926, Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote a poem describing the economic troubles of being a poet in the Soviet Union called “Conversation with a Tax Collector about Poetry.” In it he describes his situation:

“Citizen tax collector! Forgive my bothering you…
Thank you… don’t worry… I’ll stand…
My business is of a delicate nature:
about the place of the poet in the worker’s ranks.
Along with owners of stores and property,
I’m made subject to taxes and penalties…”

Put in the situation of economic stress, Mayakovsky defends his work as a valid and productive facet of society. The problem seems to stem from the fact that the system doesn’t recognize the job of “poet” to be a real one. Perhaps it is a hobby to society, but not a job. He describes the work of writing poems in terms of the items on the tax form: production cost, materials cost, travel expenses, etc:

“Now my work is like any other work.
Look here- how much I’ve lost,
what expense I have in my production
and how much I spend on materials.
You know of course about rhyme…
…Citizen tax collecter, honestly,
The poet spends a fortune on words…
Citizen! Consider my traveling expenses.
-Poetry- -all of it- is a journey into the unknown.”

This approach to the problem is humorous and causes the reader to see things from the perspective of the poet. The sarcasm about the indefinite quality of poetry comes through, and we take Mayakovsky’s point, that art can’t be quantified valuationally the way that other human endeavors can. But he doesn’t undersell its value: instead he defends it, saying “These words will move millions of hearts for thousands of years,” and challenging the tax collector to “take a ticket to immortality and, reckoning the effect of my verse, stagger my earnings over three hundred years!” “Conversation with a Tax Collector about Poetry” is Mayakovsky taking a strong stand against society, and telling it what it can and can’t do to it’s members. “I demand as my right an inch of ground among the poorest workers and peasants,” he says, and he deserves it.

Thirty years later in America another poet was having trouble fitting into society: he wrote a poem called “America” that describes this problem. “America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing./ America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17th, 1956./ I can’t stand my own mind...” Allen Ginsberg also speaks of the intangibility; the fact that art can’t be assessed for value the same way as other traded goods. He expresses the situation in terms of capitalism, by contrast to Mayakovsky: “When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?” Ginsberg’s sarcasm is familiar: good looks are as intangible as poems and as subjective: with only $2.27, how will the poet feed himself?

Ginsberg gives us his answer a bit later: auction off the poetry. He describes his poetry as though it were the Henry Ford company and offers to sell off the originals. “I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes/ America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe” Again the use of humor brings the reader into the poet’s shoes, to illustrate accurately the problem of getting by on your verse alone.

At the end of the poem, there is the suggestion that maybe the place of the poet in society is that of the misfit. Perhaps it is the poet’s place to point out the seams and cracks in society by standing separate from his surroundings. It’s a goal Ginsberg thinks is very important: he even calls it his “job:” “America this is quite serious…/I’d better get right down to the job./It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway./ America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.”

While “Conversation with a Tax Collecter…” and “America” both work to fight the image of the poet as a lazy “free rider,” or a person who takes advantage of the benefits of living in society without contributing anything, Apollinaire approaches this caricature of the poet from an entirely different angle. In his poem, “Hotel,” he embraces, albeit sarcastically, this personality”:

“My room has the shape of a cage
The sun passes her arms in at the window
But I who want to smoke to make mirages
I light in the day’s fire my cigarette
I don’t want to work I want to smoke.”

Perhaps some still see the poet in these terms: as someone who sits around daydreaming in a hotel somewhere smoking cigarettes. A big self-absorbed do-nothing, if you will. Hopefully more and more will come to see the poet in Mayakovsky’s terms, as “simultaneously a leader and a servant of the people.” As a youth today who would love to make a living writing poetry, I can say that I shall continue to write no matter if I am paid, and I will do so for two reasons: because partly a big self-absorbed do-nothing (often within reach of a pen), and because I wish to create: to be “simultaneous leader and servant” of the people around me.

insert: farmer, fireman, astronaut, taxi driver, teacher etc… all produce concrete images in one’s head
“Cortege” The Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire, p.75
“Cortege” Apollinaire, p.77
p.191 “The Bedbug & Selected Poetry” Translated: Hayward, Max and Reavey, George
p.197 “”
p.197 “”
p.205 “”
p.207 “”
p.31 Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco City Lights Books
p.31 “”
p.33 “”
p.34 Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco City Lights Books
p.201“The Bedbug & Selected Poetry” Translated: Hayward, Max and Reavey, George