Article
Poetic Injustice?
Editorial: 1 December, 2002
January 18, 2006
More than just a few journalists and poets could not help but find the gift somewhat disproportionate. Poetry, with a staff of four, a circulation of 11,000 and an office resembling a walk-in cupboard, is not exactly equipped to deal with this New Yorker quoted an unnamed writer. Gifts of this size are "usually a response to some urgent social problem such as cancer or AIDS", where the size of the donation matches "the size of the cause", the Wall Street Journal wrote last Tuesday, in an opinion piece titled "Can $100 Million Help Make Poetry Matter?".
"Just what good is all that money going to do?" the piece asked. With a reference to Dana Gioia’s famous Atlantic Monthly essay of 1991, Can Poetry Matter?, the WSJ concludes that the problem of poetry is one of outlook, not of resources. As Gioia writes, the general readership of poetry has drastically declined over the last decades: "No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group." It should therefore be Poetry editor Joe Parisi’s mission, states the WSJ, to reconnect poetry with the everyday lives of ordinary citizens.
The same day, Slate published a scathing article arguing that "the gift is the essence of bad philanthropy—an overblown act of generosity that undermines its own possible efficacy." The gift, "though well-intentioned, is foolish", asserts Slate, "perhaps literally so: Ruth Lilly has been mentally incompetent, by law, for some 20 years." Joe Parisi "cannot possibly validate" such a donation to his publication, even if he uses the money well, and so far, continues Slate, he has not sounded terribly imaginative. "Lilly should have given $10 million to 10 different magazines or started a nonprofit foundation with an elected board to hand out grants to writers," the magazine concludes.
These various points of criticism are revealing in more ways than one. There is the barely disguised, odious suggestion than anyone who gives such astounding sums of money to poetry rather than, say, cancer research or hospital wings, cannot be in their right mind. It is accompanied by a nagging, persistent worry that poetry is perhaps not as worthy a recipient for a gift of this size as medicine or science; that poetry, in fact, is less socially relevant than these acknowledged good causes, if not a downright luxury for a small elite. Then, the positive influence of money itself on American poetry is called into question, immediately and contradictorily followed by recommendations on how it should have been distributed, and how Parisi should spend it.
It seems rather premature at this stage to dismiss Parisi’s plans for the gift out of hand, and if anything, the reactions reveal that there is still a very uneasy relationship between poetry and money. Apparently, the quaint idea that artists should suffer for their art, and thus toil in poverty, has not entirely died out yet. But what of the accusation that Ruth Lilly’s gift is in fact detrimental to American poetry, by disproportionately, unfairly benefitting only one small magazine, instead of many publications and many writers? Should she have spread her wealth around?
Of course, there is nothing Ms Lilly "should" or "ought to" have done. She can do as she pleases, critics notwithstanding. Evidently, she wanted to benefit Poetry, not poetry as it can be found in hundreds of other good publications, academic departments or performance venues. Poetic injustice? Perhaps. Yet is it not precisely this unfairness, the contingency, the quirkiness of the gesture, the sheer excentricity of it all, that makes it so very wonderful? Everything about the affair has a rare, fairy tale-like quality: Ms Lilly’s own rejected poetry, the handwritten notes she received, the fabulous size of her gift and the fact that, in spite of having been declared financially and mentally incompetent by a brother worried about the family fortune, she still managed to get away with bequeathing such an enormous sum. Sometimes, people do win the lottery after all; sometimes, fairy tales do come true. Just this once, there is poetry in the money.
CORINE VLOET
It was probably the single most astonishing piece of news in the world of poetry this year: Ruth Lilly, heir to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical concern, has donated $ 100 million to the small but hugely influential Poetry magazine, in a gesture that calls forth comparisons with fairy tales. Poetry, which has published just about every significant poet in the English language for the past 90 years, did not consider Ms Lilly’s verse good enough for publication in the 1970s. Indeed, Ms Lilly, who did not take the rejection personally, turned out to be a better fairy godmother than a poet. And poetry, Cinderella of the arts, finally got to go to the ball.
Why, then, are poets and critics complaining?
Reactions to the extraordinary {id="275" title="news"} have been strangely mixed, ranging from elation and admiration to envy and downright condemnation. Even the most positive of voices seemed tempered by the kind of unease that can be summoned up in Robert Graves’ aphorism: "There is no money in poetry; but then there is no poetry in money, either." The discomfort American poet Alice Fulton aired in the New York Times is typical: "I was almost scared when I heard about it. I had come to believe that marginalization let poetry do what it wants to do, that the money would take something good and make it bad."More than just a few journalists and poets could not help but find the gift somewhat disproportionate. Poetry, with a staff of four, a circulation of 11,000 and an office resembling a walk-in cupboard, is not exactly equipped to deal with this New Yorker quoted an unnamed writer. Gifts of this size are "usually a response to some urgent social problem such as cancer or AIDS", where the size of the donation matches "the size of the cause", the Wall Street Journal wrote last Tuesday, in an opinion piece titled "Can $100 Million Help Make Poetry Matter?".
"Just what good is all that money going to do?" the piece asked. With a reference to Dana Gioia’s famous Atlantic Monthly essay of 1991, Can Poetry Matter?, the WSJ concludes that the problem of poetry is one of outlook, not of resources. As Gioia writes, the general readership of poetry has drastically declined over the last decades: "No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group." It should therefore be Poetry editor Joe Parisi’s mission, states the WSJ, to reconnect poetry with the everyday lives of ordinary citizens.
The same day, Slate published a scathing article arguing that "the gift is the essence of bad philanthropy—an overblown act of generosity that undermines its own possible efficacy." The gift, "though well-intentioned, is foolish", asserts Slate, "perhaps literally so: Ruth Lilly has been mentally incompetent, by law, for some 20 years." Joe Parisi "cannot possibly validate" such a donation to his publication, even if he uses the money well, and so far, continues Slate, he has not sounded terribly imaginative. "Lilly should have given $10 million to 10 different magazines or started a nonprofit foundation with an elected board to hand out grants to writers," the magazine concludes.
These various points of criticism are revealing in more ways than one. There is the barely disguised, odious suggestion than anyone who gives such astounding sums of money to poetry rather than, say, cancer research or hospital wings, cannot be in their right mind. It is accompanied by a nagging, persistent worry that poetry is perhaps not as worthy a recipient for a gift of this size as medicine or science; that poetry, in fact, is less socially relevant than these acknowledged good causes, if not a downright luxury for a small elite. Then, the positive influence of money itself on American poetry is called into question, immediately and contradictorily followed by recommendations on how it should have been distributed, and how Parisi should spend it.
It seems rather premature at this stage to dismiss Parisi’s plans for the gift out of hand, and if anything, the reactions reveal that there is still a very uneasy relationship between poetry and money. Apparently, the quaint idea that artists should suffer for their art, and thus toil in poverty, has not entirely died out yet. But what of the accusation that Ruth Lilly’s gift is in fact detrimental to American poetry, by disproportionately, unfairly benefitting only one small magazine, instead of many publications and many writers? Should she have spread her wealth around?
Of course, there is nothing Ms Lilly "should" or "ought to" have done. She can do as she pleases, critics notwithstanding. Evidently, she wanted to benefit Poetry, not poetry as it can be found in hundreds of other good publications, academic departments or performance venues. Poetic injustice? Perhaps. Yet is it not precisely this unfairness, the contingency, the quirkiness of the gesture, the sheer excentricity of it all, that makes it so very wonderful? Everything about the affair has a rare, fairy tale-like quality: Ms Lilly’s own rejected poetry, the handwritten notes she received, the fabulous size of her gift and the fact that, in spite of having been declared financially and mentally incompetent by a brother worried about the family fortune, she still managed to get away with bequeathing such an enormous sum. Sometimes, people do win the lottery after all; sometimes, fairy tales do come true. Just this once, there is poetry in the money.
CORINE VLOET
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