Whining Poets

          I'm tired of poets whining about the public not appreciating them.  I know more poets than most people do because I've spent my life in colleges and universities which have taken them in as Writers in Residence (comfy positions for poets whose names are sometimes recognized) and as faculty members in creative writing departments around the country.  One blogger claimed in 2012 there were 71 MFA programs (Masters in Fine Arts) and another 112 programs where poets can teach Creative Writing majors; the blogger estimated there are at least 800 new MFA's given out every year.  I doubt if anyone knows how many are poets.  But my guess is too many.

          I like poetry and have written about it, and about poets, most of my professional career.  But there is no way anyone can keep up with the the annual tidal wave of new poets, new books of poetry, and new schools training them.  And it should be made clear from the outset that there are many more good poets now than there ever have been before.  But because of their sheer numbers, they go unread.

          The poets themselves and the Creative Writing programs they come from are their own audiences.  They attend each other's readings and pretend there is a place for them someplace else in the literate universe.  That is delusional, but it's a fiction they all hold on to--just as they hold on to the idea that they are under-read and under-appreciated.  Their usual posture is a sort of hang-dog look of disappointment and lofty superiority, a difficult combination that they manage with the same irritating panache observed in perpetually misunderstood teenagers.

          I think maybe they should take a close look at T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, both of whom worked for a living, Eliot as a banker at first, then in the publishing business, and Stevens in the insurance world.  They didn't whine about audiences.  They wrote when they could, squeezed it in between other obligations.  Nothing hang-dog about them.