australian reader:
As I said, I don't intend to argue with you about this subject, but since your tone is veering toward the wounded and the personally offensive, I will add a few additional remarks.
First, I am delighted to read that there are Australian magazines that pay something close to a pittance, though they come nowhere near to what CAS and Sterling earned, adjusted for inflation. My copy of
Poet's Market is not at hand, but I'll take a look at it soon to see how many paying markets meet or exceed the munificent thirty dollar threshold.
As for the titles that you threaten to trot out, you'd be better advised to do that than to make snide implications about my open mindedness. As you should know, I am always happy to repay such remarks in their own coin, and with interest, so allow me to suggest that, in your case, unwillingness to provide such titles actually equates to inability to do so.
As to your market-based rationalizations, you completely evade the question of how much the market has deteriorated, in terms of journal payments, since Sterling's and Ashton Smith's time. Book publications were just as important to CAS and Sterling as journal payments, so please, don't try to imply that book publication today is any different in that regard from yesterday.
Quote:You assume that sharing a bus with 100 other poets involves indignity, which just shows how little you understand.
Your remark shows how little you understand, actually. While I certainly find the idea of a poetry bus comical (and, as you can see from the other comment, I am not the only one), what I am actually assuming is that
Clark Ashton Smith would find such a thing undignified, as I plainly stated. I am willing to bet my net worth that I am right, too.
I should add that I am not the least bit surprised to learn that you were on the bus.
Quote:your seeming insistence that the only pay that matters is that for poems submitted to literary journals.
Hmm, clearly I have touched a nerve, here. One would search in vain for any statement of mine claiming that pay for submissions is
all that matters. Surely, though, it is primary? A poet ought to get paid for publishing his work, and not to have to get onto a poetry bus and prostitute oneself?
Quote:[A]lternatives: grants are one, a laureateship is another, sponsorship is another, so is patronage. All are legitimate means for making income that are open to poets now, and potenmtially open to CAS were he alive today. In that sense the poetry scene has greater potential today, and also because the number of poets supported is far greater than in the early to middle 20th century.
Yes, those ways do exist for those who are willing to brown-nose and ingratiate themselves with others, or to complete endless paperwork, in the case of grants, and to play various other social games. In all seriousness, do you really think that Ashton Smith would have done so? (Sterling, more likely).
In any case, don't forget the dole; that remains an active possibility, as well. ;-) Alas, CAS and Sterling could not collect social security disability insurance or welfare to support themselves in those days. So, yes, I suppose in that respect we are a little more enlightened, today, than we were a century ago. The elephants in the room that you ignore, however, are the following:
1. What percentage of any types of poets today actually receive laureateships or patronage; and,
2. Whether a poet such as CAS, in particular (as opposed to a brown-nosing, modernist poetaster), would truly have those options open to him. You keep forgetting that that is the subject of this thread--what would a modern-day equivalent of CAS do, today?
Anyway, that's more than enough. I will not even bother to read any further huffy, evasive, and immaterial replies from you. If you care, however, to post something pertinent to my original question, then I remain interested. Otherwise, have fun on the bus!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 14 Dec 10 | 08:34AM by Absquatch.