Traveling Light:
Starving Poets
Janet I. Buck
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Starving Poets
"Live life to the fullest. Think of the women who passed up the dessert tray on the Titanic." ~Erma Bombeck
A few weeks ago, one of my students offered the following observation: "Have you ever noticed that 98% of all writers are on the skinny side and have this stricken-looking jaw line punctuated by deep-set eyes that look fondly on the prospect of suicide?" The first half was easy to explain; in order to be fat, you have to earn enough money to purchase food; the second half, well, we've been chewing on rejections so long our jaws are tired and our eyes are pitted by the strain of reading: "We appreciate your work and wish you luck
in placing it elsewhere." It's one of those generic phrases that somehow launches the ship of hope and sinks that sucker all in the short frame of twelve measly words. Politesse at its utter best. I still don't know why the sponsors of these writer's retreats, who complain incessantly about their pathetic budgets, haven't figured out they could sell Prozac at the sign up desk and make a holy fortune. It's the basic logic of supply and demand.
Four years ago I embarked on the deluded adventure of a writing career. Three months later, a Noah's Flood of question marks descended from the clouds of monetary puffiness. "How much profit are you making?" my mother asks. An innocent but pointed barb that makes Zorro's sword look like a broken toothpick crammed in a private place. Why is it that mothers have a way of running their fingers over the dust on the top shelf of angst and tossing it back in your eyes all within the confines of a single, but well-aimed utterance. "Being a writer isn't about money," I say; "It's about sharing yourself with the world." At which point, my father says: "Donate some old clothes to the Salvation Army and let someone else live on Skid Row." They think I'm packing weed into a pipe dream, which I probably am, but it's the next best thing to getting potted on a Friday night. I thought I'd be the last person on earth to trade a box of Gallo for a ream of paper, but here we are, and my regrets are few.
In an effort to pacify the promise of more contentious slaughter and plant a few shrubs of sanity in our pastures of dread, I did a little research on the monetary situations of several famous artists. Shakespeare was probably the brightest star in the freelance world, since he sold his sonnets to the Royals like the first draft of Viagra. Things have gone steadily down hill from there. Thoreau learned the ins and outs of his father's pencil factory for a good reason; he got his tools for a discount without coming across to
his Aunt Martha as an irritating flea on the hind side of humanity. Hemingway and Plath paved the two-lane road of manic depression and the rest of us have turned it into a fairly impressive freeway. There has been a great
deal of speculation about why Van Gogh took a knife to his ear, but I think critics are missing the obvious here: who wants to hear a coin drop when you know it's only a fleeting figment of imagination gone awry. On second thought, maybe he just ran out of red paint and thought it was time to donate for the noble sake of art.
These trade offs, however horrific they may seem, have their lighter sides, if you remain an effervescent optimist. When we lost our house last year, I told my husband not to sweat it; at this pace of inspiration, I didn't have time to clean toilets anyhow. As it turns out, "Slim Pickin's" is both a celebrity in the world of film and the definition of our dinner table. My husband has learned that if you roll each kernel from a bag of popcorn in a generic tub of Crisco, you can convince yourself that you aren't goin' to bed
hungry. It's the ergonomics of sheer weight. The starving artist syndrome seems to carry with it a dubious shade of glamour. It probably comes from the fact that silver stays fairly clean when there ain't no food.
From a financial point of view, I've also become a fairly cheerful tax write off. Our federal refund this year (on stamps alone) could budget a space shuttle mission, and I've got enough "take an artistic hike somewhere else notes" to replace the wallpaper in the White House and reupholster all the chairs Bill and Hillary rifled on their merry way out the back door. Sir Thomas Browne once said: "Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich." I passed that class with flying colors and string-less kites, not that we could afford one.
My husband is not the only good sport about all this; when things get lean in the grocery dept, our puppy Gretel settles for a stack of rough drafts in lieu of the filet mignon she orders with those adorable begging eyes. When we go pick up the mail and find the usual giant tomes of "No Way Jose...get a real job," she takes a decent chunk out of the postman's butt for her much deserved dessert. This is what I love about dogs: they stick by you when the light grows dim, and you can count on 'em to dig up the sprinklers in the neighbor's yard, chew up the tubes, and train 'em to pee all over a letter from The New Yorker.
~Janet I. Buck
An award-winning author, published in hundreds of literary magazines, Janet has also written several books. For more information on her public readings, and latest publications, including Before the Rose, her new CD with musician David Jackson, visit her website, listen to a sample or email.
© 2001 by Janet I. Buck. All Rights Reserved.
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