The poem as objet trouveé

There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either,” said Robert Graves. It’s a charming chiasmus, which someone like Graves was bound to weave sooner or later — sooner, it turned out. Still one can catch a whiff of sour grapes in it. How many poets, in the history of literature, ever amassed a fortune? Most of those who write poems, unless possessed of extraneous means, have never, but most certainly would want to have, written a check.

But what happens when a person of money writes a poem?  For instance, Gina Rhinehart, a mining magnate and considered as Australia’s richest person, composed an ode to mining, entitled, “Our Future,” and had it engraved on a plaque, which was set into a boulder of iron ore. The poem, which has eight rhyming couplets, celebrates the benefits of mining and mocks those who criticize the industry. Without delay, someone described it as “the universe’s worst poem, although many still dispute if it qualifies to be classified as poetry.” The poem rhymes “rampant tax” with “political hacks.” It ends with a flatliner— “Our nation needs special economic zones and wiser government, before it is too late.”

And what happens when a person of poetry comes into possession of a good fortune? My guess is that he will be in a state of aphasia, and quite likely in want of a wife too, in no special order. Because the need to write a poem springs from an empty well, which is, however, full of haunting voices coming from faraway. And, in the list of assets that attend great wealth, empty wells and voices are an odd man out.

In fact, in order to write one must have poverty — not the nose-crunching type that knocks one out, but that which leaves one’s spirit pained by longing — a poverty that hopes for and gets fullness but only through an emptying. In a sense, to write is to writhe (apart from the fact that, as one author puts it, there are days when writing practically amounts to cutting off one’s arm).

Like the writer, a Christian must choose between God and money. Jesus put it in no uncertain terms, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Francis of Assisi fully understood this and chose poverty as his “spouse.” So much did he despise money that he called it dung. Not only did he not use it, he would not touch it, and instructed the Friars Minor not to be defiled by money.

When someone left a sack of money in the church of Mary of the Angels as an offering, and a brother touched it while throwing the sack to the windowsill, Francis objected, instructing him to use his mouth instead in taking the money to the dung-heap.

Francis told the brothers to build cheap houses of wood.  Once, upon returning to Mary of the Angels, and seeing a newly built house that seemed a little too comfortable and expensive, Francis immediately fell to dismantling it by pulling out the slates and tiles of the roof, until a brother stopped him, telling him that the house did not belong to them.

As one who writes poems, I find in this anecdote a metaphor for my activity. A poem is a thing given. It belongs to someone other, a voice greater, than the poet, who in his poverty finds it, which he can build upon or abandon, but not destroy.

Francis knew this. The Poor Little Man (Poverello), who wrote the radiant Canticle of the Sun in the Umbrian dialect, was not only a poet, but probably was likewise the first Italian poet.