Hello. It’s my birthday this month, and I was wondering if you could send me a gift. I’d like your collection of essays titled Can Poetry Matter? The entire thing looks really great, but I’m mostly interested in the essay ‘œBusiness and Poetry.’ I asked your secretary at the National Endowment for the Arts about it, but she suggested that I have a virtual conversation with Amazon.com. I will undoubtedly have that conversation, but I thought I’d try you first.

Some months ago (on Nina’s suggestion) I downloaded your Knowledge@Wharton interview, “The Close Connection between Business and Poetry,” from iTunes U, and I’ve read the corresponding essay excerpts on your website. These were fascinating and helpful, but there’s one question that remains unanswered for me. How does a poet keep from becoming incredibly miserable in the world of business management? You say it can be done. You draw some convincing links between management and creativity as well as between the poet and the linguistic experience of business. You’ve obviously done it yourself. Some of my other favorite poets, like Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot, made it happen. When I worked in management, however, my poetry suffered and even slipped temporarily into non-existence, my creativity was squashed into tiny blocks the size and shape of the corporate logo; and by the end of my eight years there, despite my decent 401k and class A stock bundle, I wanted to die.

Sorry, that last statement is a touch on the dramatic, but seriously, what’s the secret? You say that the work afforded an important sensitivity to the language of the working business person. The last time I wrote a poem as a corporate management person, it opened with one of those company mottos I was forced to recite on a weekly basis to prove that my memory, as well as my work week, was fully dedicated to the mission of the business’s success. I didn’t find the corporate experience linguistically stimulating in any way.

Maybe I stayed to close too the ‘œquantitative analysis’ levels of business that you are careful to warn about in the Wharton interview. Perhaps, had I a climbed further toward the ‘œqualitative’ and the ‘œcreative,’ a different experience would have unfolded. I could always justify ‘œmaking numbers’ with metaphors about feet and form, and I thought that the time exchange would not be worth the jump to the so-called creative; perhaps I was wrong. However, I was traveling in Berlin a few months ago and had a few drinks with a man who works for one of the most successful marketing agencies in the UK. I drilled him about this very subject. He laughed at me. He said every artist who gets into marketing thinks that they’ll get paid for their creativity, but it’s just not the case. You work within the strict confines of your company’s mission, he said. He lamented briefly the forfeit of his personal film and visual arts interests for the opportunity to make a lot of money, travel, and buy unlimited numbers of drink rounds for curious strangers.

So, I’m about to finish grad school, and I’m considering a return to business. I have to admit that it was an exciting place to be for the first few years of those eight. The dynamism of the demands and the varying daily challenges do provide an unprecedented experience for the mind. And, as crap as the politics of many corporations are, the truth is, they take excellent care of the individual, both financially and in the provision of healthcare benefits (living in a country with socialized medicine has given me great appreciation for that, but that’s a post for another time). A poet really couldn’t be better taken care of (well, except maybe by the NEA) than they are by a good job in business. I just don’t get it though. Please help. And can you send that essay collection Next Day Air? I’ve already begun the application process. Thanks.

Best,
ah