Here's what the late English poet Philip Larkin had to say 30-odd years ago on the subject of money: Clearly money has something to do with life/ -- In fact, they've a lot in common, if you enquire.
Earlier this month, a distinguished but obscure American poetry magazine called (appropriately enough) Poetry got an inkling of just how much life can be improved by an infusion of money. To the astonishment of the tiny, impoverished poetry community and the envy of everyone else, Poetry woke up on Nov. 15 to find itself the stunned recipient of a $100 million gift from the reclusive 87-year-old pharmaceutical heiress and philanthropist Ruth Lilly. The magazine has valiantly hung onto life since its founding in 1912, publishing nobodies like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney over the years. But now, as its current editor, Mr. Joseph Parisi, said on hearing the news, "Ruth Lilly has ensured our existence into perpetuity."
In fact, Poetry has been given not just a new lease on life, but the potential for a whole new level or quality of life, sparking a global flurry of speculation. (One could almost hear the heads shaking and the eyebrows shooting up last week. A hundred million dollars! Ten billion yen! For poetry!) Before, Poetry barely eked out a living. It had four probably very thin staff members, who shared rent-free second-floor premises-and a single window -- in a Chicago library and famously paid its contributors just $2 a line. Basho himself would have gotten a mere six bucks from Poetry for one of his immortal haiku. Now, the magazine will be in a position to enjoy life on a Gatsby-like scale. It can disport itself like one of Yeats' imagined rich men, among flowering lawns, planted hills and overflowing fountains. The sky, or Mr. Parisi's imagination, is the limit.