ABSTRACT
Is it possible to be a professional poet? How does one enter and negotiate a career that has no mandatory training, no licensing, and no chance of making a living? Most of us have some sort of image in mind when we think of a poet: a sullen sort who wears a beret and turtleneck, a romantic eccentric, a university professor. Aside from these stereotypical images, much of our information comes from biography, autobiography, or collective biography, wherein established, successful groups of poets are traced together, as in Lehman’s book on the New York School of poets, The Last Avant-Garde, or Simpson’s Poets in Their Youth, a chronicle of friendships between members of the Confessional School of poetry. While these accounts are useful for helping us understand the lives of poets who have succeeded in making their name, what is left out is an understanding of the everyday practice that fills the life of those who are poets, whether renowned or unknown.
