Starving Artists - Part Nine

       Writing Poetry Doesn't Mean You Earn Much Money


    They are both famous Canadians and not only famous. Until recently, they were both rich. Now only one is. Yet at one time they both wrote poetry. But they rarely write it any longer. For poets like many other creative artists don't make much money from churning out poems.
    Margaret Atwood is a writer, novelist, poet and librettist and is one of Canada's most famous writers. "Margaret Atwood is an icon in Toronto," one of that city's residents says."it takes guts to criticize her back there."
     Montreal-born Leonard Cohen has written songs that are played all over the world. His song 'Hallelujah' has been covered by dozens of artists. k.d. lang sang it at the opening of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
   Until recently, when Cohen's financial advisor was revealed as a croo, Cohen's assets supposedlytotalled in the millions of dollars. Yet even to-day Cohen's not a poor man. Now both of these artists started out writing poetry. To-day they may still write the occasional poem but they don't make their living writing poetry. Not too many poets do.
     "Poetry," writes John Berger, "addresses the heart, the wound, the dead. Everything which has its being within the realm of our intersubjectivities." These are perceptive words about poetry. Still, those who write poetry have to eat and  writing poetry these days just doesn't  pay the bills.
     Margaret Atwood started writing poetry in the late 1950's. She wrote some fine poems but this didn't bring in much cash. In 1969 she published her first popular novel called 'The Edible Woman'. She then followed it up with another novel called 'Surfacing." Atwood was now on her way to fame and fortune.
     "Every book that Atwood turns out is usually a best seller," one Vancouver book store worker said back in the 1990's. If she had stuck to writing poetry, Atwood by now would have rated an honourable mention in a Canadian anthology of poetry. Yet she didn't. Fortunately for Canada she turned to writing novels She did well and so did most Canadians.
    Then there was Leonard Cohen. "I'm going to be big," Cohen told his friend Ron Halas in the mid-1960's. "I'll be bigger than everybody including Bob Dylan." Cohen never achieved the kind of fame he predicted basically because his music never became very popular in the United States.  Still, his song writing and performing music gave him money and fame. His poetry like 'Let Us Compare Mythologies' and his novels 'The Favourite Game' and 'Beautiful Losers' were quite good. Cohen I think was a better poet than a novelist. Still, none of his prose works brought in much money. Song writing did.
     What happened to Atwood and Cohen as poets was just typical.  Thomas Stearns Eliot moved around London in the 1920's and after as head of a publishing company. The St. Louis-bornT.S. Eliot just about invented modern English language poetry with his long poem 'The Waste Land'. Poetry opened the doors for Eliot to enter British society. Yet it was his job as a the head of a publishing company that paid the bills, and not his poetry.
      Wallace Stevens wrote some great poetry in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century. But once again poetry couldn't keep him alive. In the daytime Stevens worked as an executive in an insurance company.