For those of you who think there’s no money in poetry and so, why bother— think again. There are some poets who are awarded handsome poetry prizes of the six-figure kind. The Wallace Stevens Award, for example, pays $100,000. To borrow from poets.org, this annual prize is given “to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.” Am I suggesting that Writing Poetry appears as the first chapter of the famous Think and Grow Rich? Maybe not, but this is not to say that it’s entirely impossible to think and grow rich.

For the curious among you, here is a rundown of past and present Wallace Stevens Award winners. Charles Simic holds the 2007 prize, and in honor of it’s-still-National-Poetry-Month, I’m including a link to his poem, “Pigeons at Dawn,” at no extra charge.