Poets have recently been misappropriating words in order to describe poetry as an economy that, outside the poem itself, has little to do with the dominance of the market but nearly everything to do with the dominance of the state. Across the United States poets have turned to economic models from a basic need to articulatea value for a livelihood dedicated, in whole or in part, to the poetic process. Their wages cannot, of course, be determined in the bear market for free verse.Popular neglect makes it easy for poets to assume that poetry is a gift and not a commodity. Too often they ignore the state's role as mediator between gift and market through the system of grants and copyright.
