What We Do

How do we live our lives as poets? In these three critical essays Michael Gottlieb addresses issues faced by us all, even if we are not poets or artists. In Jobs of The Poets he asks: what kind of work do we find ourselves doing while we try to do our real work? In Letters to a Middle Aged Poet he asks: what happens when you're a young avant garde poet, or artist, or simply young, and you wake up one day to realize you're not young any more (and maybe not avant garde)? In A Spectre is Haunting the Poetry World he asks: what kind of world have we bequeathed to the young, in the wake of the Great Recession? Lastly, in an Author's Afterword he reflects on the current racistlanguage controversy embroiling the US poetry community.