The Poetry Ponzi Scheme: Ed Baker

just think of The Poetry Biz as a continual  ponzi scheme:

The  Poetry Ponzi Scheme.

- get a job teaching poetry to kids who will buy your poetry/buy your courses
and graduate 12.3 million younger "poets"  to poetry-teacher status (with credentials)
who will in turn "teach" kids younger than they what SELLS and
who will buy their poetry…. and various magazines and anthologies and zines to
SEE what they need to do to get into any one of the 12.7 million clubs….


meanwhile ? Ecuador gave the U.S.A. the Royal Finger ! they cash sell  their oil and their broccoli and their cut-flowers
anywhere … and go local ?

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/06/27/ecuador-cancels-us-trade-pact-over-repeated-threats/




the above a new crayon.


Tomorrow re: Cid's birthday would have been:
and this is THE ONLY mention of it   ANYWHERE !

where the hell are those who are pimping his name and pretending to be his "friends" ?


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Thanks, Ed, for sending the rant & your new artwork. I came to the same conclusion
about poetry & academia many decades ago. Here's a poem I wrote in the late 1970s
or early '80s.

FURTHER ADVICE TO YOUNG POETS

Sell your soul in the street
but not in the marketpalce

In memory of Shelley
dissect an academic
or
decide you're a failed poet at 20
and become a professor

Publish early and often
no matter how bad your poems
if you publish enough - someone
will like them

Avoid the workingclass
and politics
write about both

wear mascara

Study bodybuilding and karate
learn 4 chords on the guitar
worship yourself
in mirrors
and young girls

Do not write bad poems
in lonely bars

 note: I can't remember which early chapbooks this appeared in,
but it was included in Foot Through the Ceiling, Aya/Mercury
Press, 1986, which received the inaugural Milton Acorn People's
Poetry Award

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Ed Baker has left a new comment on your post "The Poetry Ponzi Scheme: Ed Baker":

and then there is this damn 'spell-checque' crappo-automaica...

was the reason that I dropped out of The Poetry Game 1975-1998 as what you concluded...
too Clubbie and nonstop at best mediocre poetry...
with the ubiquitous net it things have gotten much worse.

there was a neat song in the 60's with the line:

"I sold my heart to the junk-man
and I'll never fall in love again"

I sort of like the way that you are now (it seems) going ... a tighter regional concern for poets.... however, it is NOT about the poet and his/her feelings... it is about EACH poem as it can, if in does, stand on it s own.

I tell yugh, Chris
one thing about burning bridges....
the fires produce plenty of light to see clearly

and maybe get beyond egos and BS-feelings and
disquade things ?

Posted by Ed Baker to Riffs & Ripples from ZenRiver Gardens at 29 June 2013 08:26

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