going thru my archives in search of posts that match the criteria of geof's meme i think that it's gonna take me a while. better give myself a bit of time. but going thru my first year of blogging, 2004, a persistant subject that kept cropping up is what is the ideal job for a poet.

i'm less anxious about it now since i've met many different poets who have a variety of careers and jobs working either day or night. the best job i gather for a poet is the one that pays the bills. i reject the common belief that teaching, presumably at the college level, is the only proper job for a writer.

a few night back i was googling for poems by the d.c. poet buck downs. i've long dug his work and his ethos of self-publishing. cuz it's the work that matters, and how that work gets done. here is downs on the art of diy poetics and self-publishing:

I'm sure that my opinion gets read as some kind of sour grapes and/or blithering contrariness. But I would put it to anybody who writes poetry and is baffled or unhappy: stop sending poems to strangers who edit magazines; make a list of the friends & fellow poets you want to share with; send those people your poems, & expect nothing. If the results you get are half as gratifying as mine, you'll never go back.

can't argue with that.

finally, the romantic in me long thought that driving a cab might be the best job for a writer. oz writer martin edmond's blog derives is precisely about his adventures as a taxi driver in sydney. i think i wrote about my idea of a perfect job being a cab driver before. well, maybe it ain't but edmond makes it sound like a great adventure. i still like to daydream. and yes, teaching is a great gig if you can get it. but if not, no big deal. the worlds of poetry - poetries - demand only that they be fed. however one gets that income is the job to have.