I think all poets should receive a fountain pen for each birthday. A fountain pen would remind them that someone loves them. It will also reinforce the notion that they're not impostors. Because when there are so many great dead people looking over your shoulder at what you are writing, pretty soon, you start to feel like an impostor.
Being a poet is a difficult profession.
Receiving a good fountain pen once a year would remind poets that at least one reader takes their poetic occupation seriously. One reader, just as one word, could make all the difference.
It would be so easy to save a poet. One could do it with relatively small out-of-pocket expenses by hiring them an occasional housekeeper, presenting them with a nice pen, and offering them publications; this way, poets can be clean, have a writing instrument, and feel needed, which is more than enough to get through tough times. And for poets, tough times are most of the time, even with some occasional pampering.
Lera, I love this post! I have an assortment of fountain pens from over the years -- most of them gifts from beloveds or bosses, the occasional one a gift from me to me, a couple of them way above my pay-grade. The physical act of writing is so much more pleasant with a good pen, a nice flow of ink in a beautiful color. Yes! Let's do it; let's put fountain pens on our birthday wish lists!
Posted by: Moira | June 05, 2021 at 02:43 PM
Professional poets are the idiot bastards that the shotgun marriage of the culture factory and the book business produce. The marriage is the result of the public shaming of Random House CEO Bennett Cerf and his Famous Writer's School in 1970. Since then, more than 800 colleges and universities have implemented writing programs, and begun to coin professional poets.
As a born poet, who loathes all waste, I reverted to fountain pens, which I had cut my teeth on in grammar school, only a few months ago. The only approbation poets require comes from family and friends.
Posted by: Dave Read | June 06, 2021 at 09:01 AM