Eula Biss Considers Art and Poets in the World at Paris Review

For the Paris Review, Eula Biss writes about the relationships between value, capitalism, and artistry, drawing on the words of poets like June Jordan and T.S. Eliot for guidance. "Maybe the value of art, to artists and everyone else, is that it upends other value systems. Art unmakes the world made by work," Biss writes. More: 

Do I dare to eat a peach? asks J. Alfred Prufrock in his love song. Do I dare to eat a peach, he asks, after indecisions and revisions, after toast and tea, after a life measured out in coffee spoons, and after having already asked, Do I dare / Disturb the universe?

Women shouldn’t have to work for nothing, I tell my sister, and neither should artists, but I feel the way some women once felt about the Wages for Housework movement—if I were paid wages for the work of making art, then everything I do would be monetized, everything I do would be subject to the logic of this economy. And if art became my job, I’m afraid that would disturb my universe. I would have nothing unaccountable left in my life, nothing worthless, except for my child.

My sister’s son is shrieking now. She says, It’s too scary!

Continue reading at Paris Review.