In the opinion of Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst, popularity and poetry don't necessarily go hand in hand. In fact, said Bringhurst, in a newspaper interview conducted by yours truly and published a few years back, if a poet is not very popular, then that person is most likely to be very good as a writer of poems.
Being a poet, said Bringhurst, " is a hard way to get rich."
"How much money you get ", he said, "depends on lots of extraneous things. It depends on how good you are at turning poetry into a marketable product, which is something it was never supposed to be. That's why many people suppose that the better the poet you are the lower your income should be, and that's probably true."
Robert Bringhurst has been called "one of the wisest voices in Canadian poetry" and "an eloquent guide to the dark places of intellect and flesh." At one point, famed Canadian poet Robin Skelton said of Bringhurst that he is "without a doubt a major poet, not only in the context of Canadian letters, but in that of all writing of our time."
Bringhurst was born in California in 1946 and was raised in Alberta, British Columbia, Utah, Montana and Wyoming. He currently lives on Quadra Island, near Campbell River, B.C., with his wife Jan Zwicky, a poet and philosopher. As well as his work as a poet, Bringhurst is also known as the author of The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type. He has also translated works of epic poetry from Haida mythology into English.
Here is an example of Bringhurst's poetry, from a work entitled "Empedokles' Recipes" :
Blood and muscle roughly equal
quantities of storm, earth,
fire, and the high clear air
spilling together into lagoons.
At first glance, not the kind of thing that one could hum in the shower. But that is Bringhurst's point. "Popularity isn't just something that happens," he said. "You have to give something in exchange for it, and that's the dangerous part of the process."
Many people may think of poems as being snapshots of a certain moment, place, feeling or situation. Bringhurst disagrees. "I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots," he said, "but I'm more interested in poetry that is like an endless film, long stories, things that weave together many different strands, like a big piece of cloth, not like a photograph."
As well, a number of Bringhurst's poems are written to be performed by multiple voices. This process, he said, is not as confusing as it may appear to be. " They're chamber music, where the number of voices is small enough that it's quite possible for an ordinary human being to keep track of all of them at once."
Among his most recent publications is a pair of essay collections, The Tree of Meaning (GP, 2006) and Everywhere Being is Dancing (GP, 2007). Currently, Bringhurst is published by the small but spunky Canadian publishing house known as Gaspereau Press, located in Kentville, Nova Scotia.
Bringhurst's advice for those who are considering making poetry their avid avocation?
"They should make every effort to avoid that, it's like somebody who wants to become a martyr, if it's something you want you probably want it for the wrong reasons. Someone who feels compelled to write poetry should write it."
And, he did caution that if the prime intent of the poet is to please other people, then that person would "probably be better off to take up go-go dancing or street sweeping or almost any other occupation whatsoever."
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