Porno For Poets

Jonathan Mayhew posted the following response to the excerpt of an interview with Philip Levine that I included in a recent blog entry:
“I heard Levine give a reading years back and say he cut his lines in half because the New Yorker paid by the line. He could get paid more for the same poem that way,
just by
doing
this”
I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a criticism or an appreciation. It seems that Mayhew is saying that Levine has altered his art for commercial reasons. To which I respond, “yay, Philip Levine!”

I’m not saying that poets should compromise their integrity, such as it is. But if they feel comfortable modifying their work in such a way that they make more money in the process, why not? Painters and sculptors and damn near everybody else gets “commissioned” to do work for corporations and other wealthy entities. Maybe a number of poets get commissioned as well, but my guess is very few. So, if a poet can wangle an extra buck out of The New Yorker, why shouldn’t he?
To calculate a poem’s worth by the line is silly—are there painters who sell their paintings by the square inch?—but if that’s what the magazine’s policy is, I don’t blame a poet for trying to increase his yield by changing the shape of his lines. That might also help the magazine to fit the poem in between the real writing and the ads.
I don't really believe it's possible to prostitute one’s art. The fact that someone would pay X dollars per line for anything means that it has value. Every poem should have its price. For many of the poems we write, the price is loneliness, illness, existential crisis, doubt, toil, anger, love and loss. I'd much rather have the price be a dollar amount, at least then I’d know when the amount is finished being paid.
At the same time, I would love to suffer nobly for my art. I would rather have my poetry never sell, to have it sit in the bargain bin at a dusty bookstore and slowly be nibbled away by mites.
I don't mind wrestling with the contradiction. Sometimes I want to be pure and noble. And sometimes I'd just like to have a little cash.

[I plagiarized most of the above from one of my own emails—but who hasn’t done the same?]