ABSTRACT
The question of poverty and wealth came up often in interviews. Most often it was confined to speculations on the best way to make out with a minimum of income, rather than with dreams of personal financial success or marrying wealth. The ideal aim is a viable, voluntary, independent poverty, preferably with a marriage or shack-up partner who is willing to work for a living, at least part time. Chris Nelson, who holds a full-time job and supports his wife and children and does his poetry writing and painting evenings and week ends, is the exception. Usually it is a working sweetheart or wife who is the chief provider. Where both write or paint, it is the wife who is the Sunday painter or writer. Separations when they occur are not due as a rule to dissatisfaction with this financial arrangement but to other causes. Dedicated poverty is taken for granted, so much so that it is seldom a subject for discussion. What is frequently discussed are ways of “making it.” Tricks of the trade, you might say—the “trade” of getting by with as little commercial work as possible, or, ideally, with no commercial work at all.
