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Money is a kind of poetry

The title of this chapter is an aphorism from Adagia by Wallace Stevens. What this metaphorical conjoining could mean is unpacked as a further introduction to the complexities surrounding the relationships that poets and poetry may have with money, the theme illustrated by an article by Charles Simic. This aphorism being a form of metaphor, the metaphorical grounding of the book’s exploration is developed here. Stevens’s aphorism has been widely commented on, and a discussion of it includes references to poems by Dana Gioia and William Matthews, as well as remarks by the fictional poet in Humboldt’s Gift. The aphorism is then interpreted in the light of its poet’s two essays on insurance claims, which leads into a discussion of his poem ‘Attempt to Discover Life’, a lyric that concludes with a reference to Cuban currency.