I already do it for free for the most part, and would certainly continue to do so in many respects. The poetic impulse is not primarily based on making money, which sometimes results in publishers and promoters taking advantage of us. The one thing I seriously balk at is what seems to be a threat to the very idea of copyright. The poet does deserve some recompense, just as the plumber does. There seems to me a move afoot to suggest that literature should be seen as freely accessible to one and all. I’d be for that, maybe, if the same were to apply not only to plumbers but psychiatrists, pig farmers and University presidents. —Paul Muldoon, author of Moy Sand and Gravel and The Annals of Chile
I do it a tiny bit for free now, if it’s an interesting enough project (significantobjects .com) or extremely easy (Twitter) or both (this). And when I do it for money, my rate of pay varies by an order of magnitude, which suggests a certain psycho-economic elasticity if not irrationality. One of the reasons I never became a serious blogger was the Samuel Johnson voice in the back of my head (“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money”). But, basically, at this point, yes, I’m a blockhead: writing is how I figure out what I think and feel, and as long as I could publish, I’d still write what I write, even if I weren’t being paid for it. —Kurt Andersen, author of Turn of the Century; Heyday and host of PRI’s Studio 360
I had to laugh when I read the question Would I? I do and have done for years. I not only write for no money, I also translate for same and publish books for same. Which, I realize, risks sounding not too bright on my part, particularly when presented as a list. But I’m sure you’ll get basically the same response from any poet that you ask; poetry is simply, in itself, not a financially viable endeavor; it doesn’t trade on that market. It does, however, trade on other markets, vague ones such as that of recognition and respect and the only-slightly-less vague but thoroughly delightful one of friendship, a network of amity that means that anywhere you go in the world, you can find a poet or poets to connect with perhaps in tacit recognition of our limited numbers and of the fact that only we can pay ourselves, and only with ourselves. There are also concrete, crucial markets on which poetry trades, such as that of employment. For, while I’m not paid to write poetry, I would not have been hired, and thus paid, to teach had I not done that un-paid writing. And as anyone involved in a college or university in the U.S. knows, the incongruity doesn’t end with hiring: tenure in the humanities is based not 176