Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Wystan Curnow
Subject: Re-Academy
Tom Mandel wrote:
>Where are all these posts advising anyone that it is better to work in the
> corporate world (better for who and what)
> And Ron Silliman … quickly seconded this claim that there have been
> none such.
So I asked my secretary to go through the dept. e-mail files and to see if he
could find any. And to have the report on my desk at his first opportunity.
The situation seems to be as follows: on Dec. 6 Ron fired off a post in which he
said there was more collaborativeness in the corporate world than in the
university world. I.e. on that score (what) the corporation would be better for
academics (who). Also on the score of knowing what was really going on in the
economy –a must for anti-capitalists. The following day, Tom, himself posted
to the effect that the world of commerce was more open, egalitarian, permissive
of range than the university world. And that when you got sacked from your
job in business at least it was for a good reason. On Dec. l2 James Sherry,
suggested that corporations treated workers better in comparable positions than
universities.
Well, Tom & Ron, you do make some good points.
I’d like to hear more about the not WORKING for LIVING option. I don’t
suppose there are too many on the List. About PRIVATE MEANS and how to
come by them. There is not much history in this discussion, but I believe the
Modernists, especially those expatriates living in Europe, had great access to
such means. Is there a book on patronage and the avant-garde? I am, of course,
aware that the issue for many is whether it is more dishonourable to work for
business or the university, and that taking money from aristocrats or magnates
as they used to be called, may be even more dishonourable, but isn’t the
question: is it possible in this culture to be a full poet, to work for a living as a
artist, important to the discussion?