Today my poems bought me dinner. French onion soup and a hamburger. Yesterday, they bought me a pint of milk, oranges and corn muffin mix. And my poems have been sheltering me since August.
In other words, I've received my first stipend check.
All week I've smiled like crazy while handing over my debit card to a clerk. On Thursday my poems bought me an umbrella and a Colgate t-shirt.
My poems are taking care of me this year. Each bill, each cup of coffee, each new book will be purchased by money my poems earned.
My poems even sent a check to my mom.
Thank you, O poems of mine.
About Me
- Eduardo C. Corral
- Eduardo C. Corral is a CantoMundo fellow. He holds degrees from ASU and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, jubilat, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Post Road. His work has been honored with a "Discovery"/The Nation award and residencies from The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He has served as the Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and as the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University. He's the interview editor for Boxcar Poetry Review. He won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.
13 comments:
You have the most generous poems.
dinero para la jefita, que bonito... Un Vato C/S/R
i misread corn muffin mix as "coffin mix"
Did you get a refund?
So awesome. Keep rockin' it!
Eduardo,
How nice to read "My poems bought me...": You illustrate something that many take for granted: Creative works should afford us some compensation just as others work on factory lines or sell clothing to pay their bills.
All the best,
Robert
Kick ASS!
Will your poems adopt me? Please? Pretty please?
You and your poems are so lucky. Congrats! :)
Hi,
I just want to say how important of a post this is in terms of a political sense, and how grateful I am to you, Eduardo, for posting it.
I hear so many establish poets glibly, perfunctorily claim that poems don't make money, and I've always been slighty annoyed by this claim. True: a single poem isn't going to make you a millionaire, but the cummulative effect of publishing does have definite economic potential, and because of that, there's so much at stake in what a lot of people like to (or can afford to see) as minor activity.
Thanks for your cool post and you're always entertaining blog,
Steve Fellner
Congrats E! Your post made me smile too.
Congratulations. Please send work!
Oh sure, your poems sent a check to your mom, but did they send a check to ME?
But seriously, you know how I am about the attitude of gratitude. Very well said
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