GRIEVANCES
compiled from the social media of Roberto Montes
What is a poem worth?
How many hours
Is fair to give
To your employer
In order to afford
One collection
?
I am wary of poets
Who crow about the labor of poetry
Who demand compensation
(Compensation for the loss
Of hours?
Compensation for the strain?)
I am weary of poets
In It to Win It
Yawning at the thought
That their poem
Victorious
Would deserve anything less
Than a prize pool
Of entrants’ fees
One of the great strengths
Of poetry is its resistance
To valuation
The toxicity of valuation
The institutional feedback loop
Cannot be ignored
I have seen kind people forced
To make unkind decisions
Because their livelihood depends
On publishing certain work
In certain circles
So that they might accrue value
Which limits them
I have seen people share their rejections
Proudly detailing the hundreds or thousands
Of dollars spent before finally
Finally!
Being chosen for an award
(These stories
I believe meant
To curry hope)
Valuation is an efficient system
If our aim is the production
Of publishable work
Not poetry
What is our aim?
What is it we mean
When we award some of us
Thousands of dollars
From the reader fees
Of others
?
If the goal is
To relieve poets of the distraction
Of wage labor
So that they might
Finally!
Focus on their poetry
With some relief
From precarity
The current climate feels
Breathtakingly cynical
That only a few of us truly deserve
That relief
That any judicial body
(Made of those already
Deemed worthy)
Might have the authority
To determine that worth
?
The business of poetry survives
Because some of us
Only eat one meal a day
It survives because some of us
Have children to support
And no help
Some of us have medical bills
Most of us
Students loans that never diminish
It survives because we cannot write
From the depths of precarity
It survives because we are in need
Because we do what we must
But the business of poetry
Does not exist
To fulfill our needs
What is its aim?
Its aim
As ours
Is to go on
It does what it must
But I wonder how it might look
If poets were able to forego precarity
As easily
As the poem foregoes value
I wonder if poets
Rather than rely on compensation
For their poetry
Could rely on universal healthcare
I wonder if poets
Rather than spending $30
For the 10th time
In the hopes of later receiving $2000
And publication
Were free to seek alternative means
To share their work
No longer reliant on institutional legitimacy
To pad their CV
In the hopes of being chosen
To teach one more workshop
I wonder which would benefit poetry more
Paying for poets to attend readings
Or paying toward the cause of free education
I am wary of libertarian poetics
That the market should be given more power
To decide worth That the market
Having consumed enough marginalized poets
Could self-correct
To rectify its injustices
I am tired of writing the same damn poem
I am tired of reading the same damn poem
What is the value of our exhaustion
Where might I trade in
The significance of survival
For a moment’s rest
What is a poem worth?
$25
