Author Description

Published on Groundhog's Day 2016, this new poetry journal dares to raise its head out of the darkness and proclaim a new season for poets who are ready to put their verse to work. Poetry and Business contains poems about the confluence of markets and metaphor, and essays that sift through the symbols of life on the clock. Within both literary communities and corporate campuses, the presumption is that poetry and business are mutually incompatible. This presumption suits those who sit comfortably with poetry as it is, and with business as it is. Neither poetry nor business are served well by those who sit comfortably with the way things are. Business and poetry alike are impoverished by their habitual separation. This is the inaugural volume of a new kind of poetry journal, crossing the border between poetry and business. Poetry and Business seeks to continue the pilgrimage begun by poets such as David Whyte and Dana Gioia toward the uneasy boundary where executives and artists may trade with a common currency. Poetry and Business is devoted to poems and essays that explore the borderlands where citizens of these two worlds may mingle. The journal features the work of poets curious about the unexplored metaphors of business life, as well as poems by corporate professionals who seek to introduce an element of the transcendent into their companies. The worth of this project will be tested against an enduring challenge: Poets and people in business tend not to be very fond of each other. Business professionals usually scoff at poets as impractical, detached from the struggles with profit and loss that drive the production of material worth or lead to ruin. Poets, for their part, typically dismiss people in business as superficial sellouts who never pause to consider the deeper significance of life. Oscar Wilde depicted this mutual antipathy over a hundred years ago, casting the capitalist as a cynic who "knows the p