It would be useful for someone—some Ph.D. candidate attracted to the depths of the crooked ravine that separates the arts from the social sciences—to do a study of exactly how American poets do make their livings these days, and maybe compare it with how the same class of culture workers earned their livings 50 or 100 years ago. We all talk about academe, and it sure seems from reading the bios in the back of any recent anthology that most poets are to be found there. I wonder, though. Most of the poets I know personally do not make their primary living in classrooms.

As for funding of journals and presses ... I wonder, too, if there's a future for it. And what does it say about us if we do, in fact, lose a large percentage of literary publishers if government funding dries up? What does it say about the people who start such ventures if they retreat before lack of (government) funding?

Maybe there's an opportunity here. The upper 1% may be looking for ways to rebuild their tattered image (is there anyone left who does not despise them as a class?); surely some among them are decent, intelligent human beings with interests that reach beyond their trust funds. If there is a passel of Laughlins and Lillys out there, perhaps we ought to concentrate on creating a mechanism for them to participate in poetry publishing.

Or maybe we all ought to just admit that the Web is the only future and shift all our activities onto it. Between the Web and the Kindle, poetry should still be able to maintain and even extend its mind-share.

Not exactly the academic study you want, Joseph, but there is the NEA study of artists in the workforce, which is a pretty interesting read.

I've been wondering about this myself lately, Cathy, so thanks for bringing it up. I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion here, but I guess no one is likely to answer questions like: how many poets have lost their jobs since September? Or how much money did the Poetry Fund lose in October?

Maybe it will be like the seventies when the state funded the (still in progress) revolution?

Fund for Poetry, rather.

They need to bring this issue of the Times back into print immediately.
http://www.nytimes-se.com/

When I was in college in the early 1960s, the prevailing wisdom was that a would-be writer should prepare for a career other than writing. By studying business or library science or anthropology one would develop a rich body of experience to draw from and make a living at the same time. Early retirement was the reward, providing one's personal "trust fund" and at least 20 years to draw on the accumulated material.

As someone who teaches in academia and is also a poet (and now an administrator), I can say with absolute certainty that the economic downturn DOES affect poetry and poets. Like so many public universities, our budgets have been slashed, meaning that future jobs for poets and writers are threatened and that our visiting writers series will also be compromised. No matter what people may think about poets in academia, university and community-sponsored reading series are two of the major ways in which beginning poets and writers across society get economic support and visibility. This economic downturn also means that many of the writers that DO continue to get supported are the expensive and "famous" ones, because those are the names that administrators and arts programmers are most willing to write checks for, ironically making it cheaper for the creative writing program to bring in a bestselling author than a first-time novelist. The economy's effects on the university means that we all risk overlooking so many great first and second-book poets, simply because (for the time at least) we may have to.