{"id":8391,"date":"2012-05-24T17:01:26","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T21:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=8391"},"modified":"2012-05-24T17:01:26","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T21:01:26","slug":"the-price-of-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/the-price-of-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"The Price of Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Waking up early at the Luxembourg Embassy in D.C. (more on that maybe in the\u00a0<\/span>next<\/span>\u00a0post) I walk out onto Mass Ave to find a breakfast spot, hang a right after\u00a0<\/span>Gandhi’s<\/span>\u00a0statue & come to an excellent Belgian Bon Pain joint \u2014 organic everything, so soft boiled egg, various breads, etc. Across the street I espy a bookshop & stroll over once “restaur\u00e9.” \u00a0One window displays all war books from the Battle of the Bulge to Afghanistan \u2014 well, less than a century of murder & mayhem (thought of this later as I walked back, passing the Cincinatti Society plaque celebrating the old Roman hero Cincinattus who after leading the Roman armies to military victory went back to leading his plow on his farm \u2014 which should be the fate or\u00a0<\/span>atonement<\/span>\u00a0of all generals who do not die with\/instead of their cannon fodder.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The second window held an array of used books signed by their authors, with prominent price tag attached. It didn’t come as a surprise that Robert Kennedy’s book To Seek A New World<\/em> would fetch the highest prize \u2014 $600. \u00a0Jon Le Carr\u00e9 was a steal at $ 65, as was Jimmy Carter at $ 75 and Rushdie’s Satanic Verses<\/em>\u00a0at $85 \u2014 if you were interested. The surprise came at the bottom right hand corner where a copy of Robert Duncan’s Bending the Bow<\/em> was offered for $150! An odd sort of vindication for poetry, though I have no clue why in D.C. close to DuPont Circle, the poetry of RD should fetch a higher price than the prose of Rushdie. Or maybe it is not a matter of poetry but just a question of availability or “demand & supply,” as they say \u2014 & Rushdie signed copies might be legion while RD’s signature is rare?<\/div>\n
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Idly musing about the price of poetry I walked back to the Lux Am, passing statues of liberators & the like, & not wanting to pass so well-nourished by a gaunt bronze Gandhi, I went down P street \u2014 came to the memorial statue of the Ukrainian bard Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), poet and fighter for independence as the set-in-stone text has it. The quatrain inscribed on the accompanying slab was less than momentous \u2014 as far as the poetry of the thing was concerned. But then, who knows, so much can get lost in translation, and if he died in battle fighting for\u00a0independence\u00a0in his late forties, well that would be another way of\u00a0looking\u00a0at the price of poetry, good or bad.<\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Waking up early at the Luxembourg Embassy in D.C. (more on that maybe in the\u00a0next\u00a0post) I walk out onto Mass Ave to find a breakfast spot, hang a right after\u00a0Gandhi’s\u00a0statue & come to an...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[1103,1226,1227],"class_list":["post-8391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-robert-duncan","tag-salman-rushdie","tag-taras-shevchenko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8391"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8399,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8391\/revisions\/8399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}