State of the Arts

Jeff Alworth

Last week's New Yorker featured a wonderful story of two Portland poets, Michael and Matthew Dickman.  They are young but already accomplished--both have had collections published, and Matthew's book All American Poem won the Honickman First Book Prize.  They've both won a host of awards and fellowships.  Despite this, it's likely that a profile in the magazine might have come later--poets usually get retrospective treatments--save for the interesting fact that the brothers are twins.

They share the same genes, last names, and childhoods, but their poetry is markedly different.  (Art works in mysterious ways.)  Portland plays less of a role in their verse than Lents, the neighborhood they grew up in (Rebecca Mead admirably avoids ever employing the phrase "felony flats" in the article).  Two excerpts from the article illustrate the point.  Michael, from "Kings":

They used to be good at being alive,
pointing their index fingers at
the trees passing
invisible sentences
proclamations

knighting the birds
one by one

All down my street the new fathers
beat the kingness
out
of the
kings

Matthew, from "Lents District":

Dear Lents, dear 82nd avenue, dear 92nd and Foster,
I am your strange son.
You saved me when I needed saving,
your arms wrapped around
my bassinet like patrol cars wrapped
around
the school yard
the night Jason went crazy--

I am sadly unfamiliar with the Dickman brothers.  I let my subscription to Poetry Magazine lapse years ago and to tell the truth, I don't even read every poem in the New Yorker.  It's possible the Dickmans are riding the wave of fame by virtue of genome, not lyricism (certainly that's the view of a blogger or two).  But let's leave that aside.  The fact is that they have managed to ride a wave.  Their poetry is sufficiently impressive to have won grants and the approval of poetry editor Paul Muldoon.  And even if their accomplishment is partly circumstantial, they wouldn't be the first writers whose relations gave them a leg up.

All of this leads me to the lede (which every good blogger tries to bury below the jump): guess how the Dickmans earn their living?  Not by dint of this fame.  Mead:

Matthew works at Whole Foods, behind the prepared-foods counter, where he earns eleven dollars an hour; Michael has a job as a prep cook at a restaurant across town making nine-fifty an hour.

This is both unsurprising and shocking.  It is unsurprising for obvious reasons--poets starve.  But it's shocking to think that artists of this stature--rating a profile in the premier culture mag in the country--are working for salaries in the low twenties per year.  Pick another profession at random--orthodontist, basketball player, carpenter, chef; reaching the heights of these jobs earns a decent living.  In another country, poets would have support from private arts groups or the government.  Even fifty years ago Americans did a lot better at supporting our artists. But now you can reach the top heights and have to toil at a day job.

When you submit to the dictates of the market, you eliminate all that the market does not value.  We have exalted Wall Street "geniuses" and spurned those who can't make a decent buck, like poets and bassoonists.  Our country produces mortgage-backed securities, not art.  Of course, not everything of value has commercial value.  I have to wonder--if we spent a little more time and money nurturing inquiries into fields like poetry, might we have been as quick to trust the crooks who sold us the securities?

Kudos to Michael and Matthew.  Let's hope they find a way to support their art; I like to think their time is better spent writing poetry than making club sandwiches.

By Jeff Alworth April 14, 2009