ABSTRACT
TP: How do you conceive of the intersection of poetry and economics? How does poetry relate – or, perhaps, not relate – to our current economic conjuncture?
SS: Poems, like all art works, have their own economy: the circulation of images and metaphors, the reach of the work in time and space, the density of the syntax and specificity of the words – all appearing under a rule of the non-superfluous: there can be no waste in a poem – everything counts. To take away any part is to destroy the whole. Although most commodities are used up or worn down to worthlessness by their participation in exchange, the completed poem – a ‘poetic’, made, thing – lives on, renewed, in the gift economy of communication and interpretation.
