That Said...

Steve Fellner had a great post about Random Thoughts about Being Class & Being an Artist

I thought I'd add a few thoughts to it--


When I was working a corporate job in my late twenties and finally earning the $$$ I had always hoped to, I was miserable. I found an old videotape of my husband and I in our first place together. We had no furniture, 1 dog, 1 cat, and little money. For Christmas ornaments, we raided a 25 cent machine and put hooks on the plastic dinosaurs toys that came out.

When I watched that videotape of myself I started crying. When my husband asked why I said, "The girl in the video looks so happy." She was.

It was then I realized that for the first time in my life that $$ didn't = happiness.


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That said, I don't romanticize poverty. It's not fun if you can't afford to eat or are cold. It's not fun not knowing how you will pay your bills or make rent. It is not fun hoping nothing happens to your car, body, teeth, home, life, because if it happens you have no idea how you'll pay for it.

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That said, having to be creative with money can be satisfying...if you're not hungry or cold.

When you don't have an unlimited amount of $$ to spend, it makes you live more consciously and more intentionally.

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That said, I think you can be an artist and wealthy. I don't think they are mutually exclusive.


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I have always believed Forrest Gump's idea that a person only needs so much money and the rest is for showing off.

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That said, sometimes I'd like to be a show off.

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Last night we bought hummus, greens, baby arugula, tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, a bottle of red wine and picked basil from our garden and while having dinner, I felt rich.

I might have even said, "I like our life."

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I think sometimes being an artist is about finding the richness around you. Museums make me feel rich as do libraries. Walking through a garden does too or buying the better chocolate, and the wine that is $2 more. Small gifts, I guess.

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Mostly though, we need to be warm and to be able to afford food for anything to feel right. At least that's how it works for me. If I'm cold and hungry, I'm not much of an artist.

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Sometimes I lose my way as an artist and have to refocus on who I am authentically. I am not my khakis, but sometimes I forget that.

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It can be hard when we live in a world of commercials and product placement.


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Other artists make me feel rich and help refocus me when I get lost in the maze of want. It's time to read the Circle of Simplicity again. It's time to remember why I'm here, what matters, and who I am.

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Robert Hass: Time & Materials

I have Robert Hass's Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005
on my desk right now.

The book is physically beautiful. Red with birds and patterns. It would make a lovely Valentine's gifts--I think about this because I bought this on Valentine's day.

Here's Publisher Weekly's review on it--

From Publishers Weekly (Starred Review.) --

The first book in 10 years from former U.S. poet laureate Hass may be his best in 30: these new poems show a rare internal variety, even as they reflect his constant concerns. One is human impact on the planet at the century's end: a nine-part verse-essay addressed to the ancient Roman poet Lucretius sums up evolution, deplores global warming and says that the earth needs a dream of restoration in which/ She dances and the birds just keep arriving. Another concern is biography and memory, not so much Hass's own life as the lives of family and friends. A poem about his sad father and alcoholic mother avoids self-pity by telling a finely paced story. Hass also commemorates the late Polish Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, with whom he collaborated on translations; condemns war in harsh, stripped-down prose poems; explores achievements in visual art from Gerhard Richter to Vermeer; and turns in perfected, understated phrases on Japanese Buddhist models. Through it all runs a rare skill with long sentences, a light touch, a wish to make claims not just on our ears but on our hearts, and a willingness to
wait—few poets wait longer, it seems—for just the right word.

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What I like?

The political poems mixed in with a poem about Iowa in winter.

How Hass never seems to raise his voice in a poem, yet there is passion (i.e. the 4 page poem called "Bush's War")

The understatement of his poems :
"Bone china handle of a coffee mug: the moon"

"Before skin, words."
(both lines from the poem "Twin Dolphins")

What I like about Hass is that he doesn't write to shock, to be witty, to be edgy, to be talked about-- he loyalty is to the poem and to the line.

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This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 (or 08?). I'd recommend it if you like your poetry served without irony or self-importance.

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