Why Not?
And now for our (optional) prompt. The American poet Frank O’Hara was an art critic and friend to numerous painters and poets In New York City in the 1950s and 60s. His poems feature a breezy, funny, conversational style. His poem “Why I Am Not a Painter” is pretty characteristic, with actual dialogue and a playfully offhand tone. Following O’Hara, today we challenge you to write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist – or, if you think of yourself as more of a musician or painter (or school bus driver or scuba diver or expert on medieval Maltese banking) – explain why you are that and not something else!
The poem that this prompt references is great. Within the work of the painter, there is the substrate of language, and within the work of the poet, there is the substrate of colour. The painter is publicly a master of colour, and privately a master of language, and vice versa for the poet.
Thinking laterally about this public/private divide, I thought about the difference between working in the public and private sector.
Aside from skill, training, drive
Why I am not a software engineer
A friend
Who works for a big consultancy
Got a government contract
He was assigned to a government office
To work closely with domain experts
To improve their systems,
Clean their data,
Build insights,
And all the rest
When he arrived at the government office
He wondered where the free smoothies were
At meetings, he wondered where the project management frameworks were
Why senior managers could spend a whole meeting discussing abstractly
a potential outcome years down the line
No free coffee, fruit, no prince, kanban
Another friend, got a job in a big consultancy
He was very effective, completed many tasks
He was kept busy, and thorugh busyness became excellent.
Now, you wonder why I am not a software engineer
Within the heart of the private company
Engine of productivity
Within the heart of the public agency
Messy contradictions, of public good, public interest
and slow thinking
Within the private company,
a self that is forged in the image of corporate excellence
Within the public agency,
a self is carefully put aside for higher service
In either case, something is given over
It becomes about whether you can convince yourself
The sacrifice was worth it
