To your health!

Andrew Shields has some interesting points to make in response to my Rock Stone Plum Review essay on "Can Poetry Matter". As he says,

One very good reason for poets to want to get credentialed (MFA) and tenured (Professor of Creative Writing)—or even just working for a university in some way—is to get health insurance.

This is particularly true of American poets. Here we have public health insurance -- although a succession of "conservative" governments has hardly helped to conserve the quality of that care, and private care is starting to make serious inroads. Right now waiting for a doctor in a Canadian hospital is a cross between Waiting for Godot and Fear and Trembling Unto Death.