Dorothy Rowe, psychologist and author of The Real Meaning of Money, thinks, by contrast, that there is a kind of poetry in money, because money ‘can allow us to express something that’s within us that we’ve never been able to express’. By contrast, people who are genuinely destitute ‘have to abandon or never acquire a certain amount of humanity; they are always just trying to stay alive so can’t consider other people. You have to be able to stop thinking about money in order to think about other people.
‘Acquiring money takes on a quality that it doesn’t have for the rest of us. Suddenly a little bit of money for that day changes the quality of your life, and in some ways that is a poetical experience, because poetry is the relationship of our existence to everything else.’
One former banker agrees with Rowe, and admits: ‘Of course, to an unreconstructed capitalist like myself staring at a Level II screen of Vodafone shares reveals the sublime poetry of the true free market... But I think you may be looking for something a bit more cultural than that!’
I must leave the last word to the novelist Jonathan Franzen, who wrote in his 2002 book of essays, How to be Alone: ‘There’s never been much love lost between literature and the market. The consumer economy loves a product that sells at a premium, wears out quickly or is susceptible to regular improvement… A classic work of literature is inexpensive, infinitely re-usable, and, worst of all, unimprovable.’
Money
Money, the long green, cash, stash, rhino, jack or just plain dough.
Chock it up, fork it over, shell it out. Watch it burn holes through pockets.
To be made of it! To have it to burn! Greenbacks, double eagles, megabucks and Ginnie Maes.
It greases the palm, feathers a nest, holds heads above water, makes both ends meet.
Money breeds money. Gathering interest, compounding daily. Always in circulation.
Money. You don’t know where it’s been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks.
Dana Gioia
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