Andrew Michael Gorin : part two

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

I think poetry often operates outside of capitalist economies of value and exchange, simply because it’s not deemed valuable by the broader culture. Many people know James Sherry’s old joke (as retold by Charles Bernstein) that “a piece of paper with nothing on it has a definite economic value. If you print a poem on it, that value is lost.” Of course, poetry in the age of social media and the academicization of the literary arts has a cultural capital which increasingly translates into actual capital. So I should say that poetry can operate outside of conventional economies of exchange, perhaps more than other forms.

This is good and bad. It’s bad because poets have trouble making ends meet, and those with independent resources have an easier time of it. It’s good because poetry may be somewhat less beholden to the economic interests of powerful institutions and corporations, especially given all the small press and self-publishing that goes on. To put it in more personal terms, I regularly feel the dismissal of poets and poetry that comes from the American professional elite and even from many sectors within the academic humanities. There’s nominal approval of our supposedly noble endeavor, sure. But deep down the lawyers, doctors, scientists, policymakers and other members of the middle or managerial class think poets are lazy masturbators. 

Because of this, many poets are able to write against the status quo, and many become activists in one way or another. Compare the number of formally experimental and/or politically active “successful" poets to the number of successful novelists who fit those characterizations. Whereas in my scholarly work, I’m constantly aware of and influenced by the demands of “professionalization” and the list of things humanities departments are currently looking for from prospective faculty, in my poetry, I tend not to think about these things, for lack of expectation that I will be rewarded if I do. This is probably naïve, because English departments are now virtually the ONLY places in the US where experimental poets can be financially supported for what they do.