Editor’s Note: Since Friday is the classic day for Pop Quizzes, here’s one (entirely cheek-entongued):
The Worthy Beggar is earnest. She works hard at her craft, becoming the best poet she can be. She polishes herself like a gem. When folks offer her treats—writing gigs, weeks in the wilderness with just a pen and a pot-bellied stove for company—she grins. She’ll live on bread and water if that’s required—especially if they’re served to her in a library. At heart, she is a monk, a do-without-er, a pillar of words. Sometimes she’s an adjunct. Other times, she’s the Poet Laureate. She has a high tolerance for sweeping the kitchens of colleges. The Spartans would have welcomed her—she writes like other people do battle. Her economic model is simple: I’ll be so wonderful, no one will mind if you reward me!
The Entrepreneur Poet is the Horatio Alger of the Literary Scene. Need a sonnet—she’s got it. Last week, she started her own online ‘zine, traveled to five open mikes, and spoke with the manager at the local coffeehouse about bringing some new talent back home. She can’t resist a new idea. Poetry is fun. Trash her in a review? That’s okay. She isn’t waiting on you anyway. There’s always more work to do and she’s Janie-on-the-Spot, a pen for hire, the writer for the job. She may labor in the stock market, as a doctor, an editor, a veterinarian, or even a woman-at-arms. She may have a word-theory of her own that she supports in her spare time (sometime between 1a.m. and dawn). Her work ethic is straightforward: Money and poetry are separate matters. If you offer her any money at all for poetry, first she’s amused and then she’ll invest it. The ladder of literature: what’s that? The ladder of life? She’s a climber!
-J.F.