Monday, April 24, 2006
Maybe we should stop making the old and rich richer
The Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation is $100,000.
Of the last five winners, one (Kay Ryan) was 68 years old or younger. The only other one of the five under 70 was C. K. Williams, who turned 69 the year he won. Richard Wilbur is 85, Linda Pastan was 71, and Lisel Mueller was 78.
Of all the winners since 1986, only one (Yusef Komunyakaa) received it before the year in which he/she turned 55 (he turned 54 the year he won). William Matthews won it the same year he turned 55 and died.
Unless I'm missing someone, a grand total of one of the 21 winners has been of a minority ethnicity.
Yeah, uh, way to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots, Poetry Foundation. Very democratic.
Edited to add: the full list of winners.
Of the last five winners, one (Kay Ryan) was 68 years old or younger. The only other one of the five under 70 was C. K. Williams, who turned 69 the year he won. Richard Wilbur is 85, Linda Pastan was 71, and Lisel Mueller was 78.
Of all the winners since 1986, only one (Yusef Komunyakaa) received it before the year in which he/she turned 55 (he turned 54 the year he won). William Matthews won it the same year he turned 55 and died.
Unless I'm missing someone, a grand total of one of the 21 winners has been of a minority ethnicity.
Yeah, uh, way to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots, Poetry Foundation. Very democratic.
Edited to add: the full list of winners.
Comments:
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I am not sure TPF is democratic or ever said they were. And the Ruth Lily Prize is older than TPF and its Ruth Lily wealth. That said, it is interesting to look at the winners, isn't it?
No, I don't suppose they did say they were (or it was) democratic. But I flat-out think it's stupid to be giving $100,000 to people whose major contributions to poetry are entirely in the past. I think it's nice to recognize past accomplishments, but the money ought to go to present or future accomplishers. Or, considering the source, toward getting more readers. Handing a big cash award to yet-another-70-year-old-white-man is not getting much of anything done.
I'm always surprised when young poets complain about older poets winning prizes. How then, does one recognize future accomplishers? Many poets write a few good poems then stop or give it up. In their 30s. Or 40s. Scary thought, isn't it? But it's true. I don't think most young writers have much of a body of work behind them. But that's easy for me to say I'm elderly.
"I'm always surprised when young poets complain about older poets winning prizes."
Why? That'd be like me saying I'm surprised when I hear something like "Youth is wasted on the young." Agree, disagree, but it's not really a shocking sentiment in itself.
Lifetime achievement awards are lovely--I don't think they should have $100,000 attached, however.
And besides, when most-if-not-all of the supposed awards for "Best book of the year" are crypto-lifetime-achievement-awards also, I tend to think the whole system is pretty fucked up, and a potential contributing reason for Young Poets with Potential giving it up. And maybe it's as much about cliques as it is about age.
Fortunately, one of my prime motivators for writing is spite.
Why? That'd be like me saying I'm surprised when I hear something like "Youth is wasted on the young." Agree, disagree, but it's not really a shocking sentiment in itself.
Lifetime achievement awards are lovely--I don't think they should have $100,000 attached, however.
And besides, when most-if-not-all of the supposed awards for "Best book of the year" are crypto-lifetime-achievement-awards also, I tend to think the whole system is pretty fucked up, and a potential contributing reason for Young Poets with Potential giving it up. And maybe it's as much about cliques as it is about age.
Fortunately, one of my prime motivators for writing is spite.
Saying nothing of age--I just wish more money was given to writers who really need it. Not writers who have a healthy tenure track job and go on reading tours, but writers who don't have that kind of income, and who need the money bad.
That's all. And Rebecca, you are not eldery.
That's all. And Rebecca, you are not eldery.
I agree with Awfully Serious. The point isn't so much that poets near or past 70 have gotten large cash awards. It's that the poets who have gotten the awards might not necessarily have been the poets who had the greatest need of the money.
This apart from whether they were really anyone's idea of the "best" poets, the poets whose work most merited an award of any kind, cash or not. This obviously is a question one can debate...
(By way of disclosure here, since the discussion is partly about age, I'll point out that I'm 51.)
It could be argued that giving a large cash award to a poet past 60 or 70 might be a worthwhile way to offer some kind of retirement security, at any rate in the case of poets who don't have tenured teaching jobs or other (relatively) stable sources of income.
I personally wouldn't have given such a big whopping award to any of the poets you mentioned by name in your post, except possibly Yusef Komunyakaa. (I haven't taken a look at the complete list of the award recipients.)
Just off the top of my head, five poets who are somewhere past 50 who I might vote to give a large money grant to instead (if voting were involved, and if anybody is going to give awards like this at all): Joy Harjo, Sharon Doubiago, Jack Hirschman, Jayne Cortez, Nellie Wong.
This apart from whether they were really anyone's idea of the "best" poets, the poets whose work most merited an award of any kind, cash or not. This obviously is a question one can debate...
(By way of disclosure here, since the discussion is partly about age, I'll point out that I'm 51.)
It could be argued that giving a large cash award to a poet past 60 or 70 might be a worthwhile way to offer some kind of retirement security, at any rate in the case of poets who don't have tenured teaching jobs or other (relatively) stable sources of income.
I personally wouldn't have given such a big whopping award to any of the poets you mentioned by name in your post, except possibly Yusef Komunyakaa. (I haven't taken a look at the complete list of the award recipients.)
Just off the top of my head, five poets who are somewhere past 50 who I might vote to give a large money grant to instead (if voting were involved, and if anybody is going to give awards like this at all): Joy Harjo, Sharon Doubiago, Jack Hirschman, Jayne Cortez, Nellie Wong.
If the Poetry Foundation is worried about security for poets at retirement age--and hey, that's not an inconsiderable worry--lump sums of $100,000 to people who are primarily, as Alison points out, already well set-up don't show it well. I probably made too much of the age issue and not enough of the have/have-not issue, which is the most absurd aspect to me.
Well, Amy Clampitt is a good example of someone who had very little. Her winning a MacArthur fellowship finally allowed her to buy a small house, something she only enjoyed for a few years before dying of ovarian cancer. Being old does not mean being set. Anyway, not arguing with you, just chiming in here and there.
The list of full winners reads strangely like the contributors listings on many of the BAP anthologies...
That's definitely a good point, C. Dale, and I'm glad you brought up the MacArthur fellowships, which I think are a much better awarding of big money (even if some of them still go to the already rich).
While I'm thinking of it, I'll mention that apparently David Foster Wallace dropped his (no-doubt five-figure) appearance fee to read at CC because of his big grant. That seems to me a good idea. I know at least several of the Lilly winners have similar five-figure appearance fees, so they can show up five places and make more than I do in a year.
While I'm thinking of it, I'll mention that apparently David Foster Wallace dropped his (no-doubt five-figure) appearance fee to read at CC because of his big grant. That seems to me a good idea. I know at least several of the Lilly winners have similar five-figure appearance fees, so they can show up five places and make more than I do in a year.
Arghhh....this is giving me a headache. :)
Enough of a headache that when I tried to respond here, I found I got totally carried away and it was much too long to post as a response and I liked the sound of my own voice enough that I ended up posting the whole rant on my own blog. < grin >
I think ya'all are wrong, in other words.
Enough of a headache that when I tried to respond here, I found I got totally carried away and it was much too long to post as a response and I liked the sound of my own voice enough that I ended up posting the whole rant on my own blog. < grin >
I think ya'all are wrong, in other words.
I just see it as another recognition of the already-recognized. It's like the Oscars. Occasionally, there's a shocker. But the rest of the time it's the same people getting nominated. The same people getting the pats on the back. It's safe to give a big award to Richard Wilbur, and most organizations are all about being safe.
Julie
Julie
Maybe they actually give the award based on merit and quality of poetry rather than gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But, you're right, probably not. Because is anything in the arts democratic? Should it be?
If merit equals "critical mass of books, previous awards, and academic stature," then by gosh every one of those people deserved it.
You're missing the point of my argument, though (and I would assume deliberately based on the sarcasm of your response)--I'm not saying that these people necessarily don't deserve a lifetime achievement award (though a few are complete mediocrities and most are, as Julie notes, atrociously safe picks), but that $100,000 is too large an amount to attach to it and would, nay, should, be better spent elsewhere.
You're missing the point of my argument, though (and I would assume deliberately based on the sarcasm of your response)--I'm not saying that these people necessarily don't deserve a lifetime achievement award (though a few are complete mediocrities and most are, as Julie notes, atrociously safe picks), but that $100,000 is too large an amount to attach to it and would, nay, should, be better spent elsewhere.
And let me just note the idiocy of the "Maybe they actually give the award based on merit and quality of poetry rather than gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation" statement. Poetry in America today is a mostly white bourgeois endeavor, and usually a patriarchy. The dominant system has long been patently unfair to minorities, the poor, and women--if, as you suggest, the prize is given based on "merit and quality" (a supposition I call bullshit on anyway), don't you think it's awfully fucking revealing about the inequities of the system that at one point old white men won 9 consecutive years? That doesn't indicate a meritocracy--it indicates a system where those in power consolidate their power and pass it along to an inner circle of like people.
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