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Sam Silva
Sef knows that poetry is a "pure" art form, the
kind untrammeled by money. If poets wish to make a living at poetry...why, by
God, they get an MFA and teach! It is a kind of "professional"
secret... But Sef himself, never had the presence of mind, literal or
otherwise, to go through such consternation. Not for a Master’s or even a
Bachelor’s degree. It irritates the flock of pedigrees no end, when the
assumptions of the guild are laid out and slaughtered, when an endless list of
literary markets have not only taken his work, but layered it with laurels. He had been through the radio spiel before, and had, for the
sake of public etiquette, pretended that the small presses paid in money. He
had intimated that the small classes he taught at the local technical college
for nickels and dimes were some how related to those of the general academy.
Not because he was embarrassed...on the contrary, because he did not wish to
embarrass his pompous colleagues. ....but the way his mind wandered from the claptrap of such
superficial decency always seemed worlds opposite from the actual act of real
and legitimate literary creation, and when the radio questioner asked him what
he would have done were he not a poet, though he did not literally spell out
the fact that a book of poetry and eighty cents would buy you a cup of coffee,
and that what he lived on was a government disability check, this is what he
said: "To be honest, I would have felt much better about
myself, if I had spent my time washing dishes...if I could have learned to
wash dishes the way professionals do. What I would have had in the economy of
this world would have been a way to sustain myself in a manner that would
justify itself as the kind of limited social commitment that I personally find
worthwhile. A job that I could respect on the one hand...travel the
multitudinous geographical boundaries that other incomes disallow, if not in
fact, at least in terms of their intimate knowledge. And finally it would be
the kind of job, that I could pick up, and throw away...with as much aplomb
as people are thrown away!" When the radio audience was convinced...by a joke someone
else made that this was just a bit of liberal social camp...applause broke out
and Sef felt sick again...
Copyright © Sam Silva 2000 |