I can tell when a post of mine – like yesterday’s – is problematic. One clue is that one of the smartest (albeit briefest) responses gets withdrawn by its author, who apparently decided against raising the question of class & poetry after all. But, yes, that question is what that litany of schools raises for me as well.

Tho I would note that some students at Berkeley – Rae Armantrout & myself, to name two – got there despite having come from the lowest reaches of the working class. In my case, I was a miserable high school student, a C+ student overall and that only because I was incapable of anything less than an A in English & Soc. But that C+ was enough to get me into SF State in the mid-1960s, which enabled me to transfer as a junior back across the Bay. And, further, I would wonder just how many of the poets listed yesterday were so-called legacy students wherever they went – I think the answer will be very close to zero.

So that the question of class then gets to be how it contributes to the creation of a cohort of young high achievers. And then what it is, or might be, that takes these folks & turns them instead toward lives involved in the most uneconomic of all adult activities – poetry. Let’s face it – most poets will make less from writing than C.A. Conrad’s mother did shoplifting. So what is the better career choice?