World Class Poetry Blog

Are You A Poet Or - Shriek! -
A “Hobbyist”?
16 February 2008, the poet @ 8:46 pm

What is a poet? Is it anyone who has ever written a poem? Is it only people who have had poems published? How do we decide who fits the description of a poet? Or does it matter?

A few days ago I made a comment in a blog post that drew a lot of gunfire and I thought I’d expand on my thoughts on that subject. I was setting myself up for a first time critique of a blog by a new blogger who was looking for some feedback on her poetry and new blog. I admire anyone who has the guts to ask for such a critique, but the discussion ended up being a defense of a certain “status,” which was not what the post was about. So I feel the need to expand on the subject somewhat. Discussion and feedback is encouraged.

Definitions Of “Poet”
According to Answers.com, there are two definitions of poet:

1. A writer of poems.
2. One who is especially gifted in the perception and expression of the beautiful or lyrical: “[the naturalist John Burroughs] was the bard of the bird feeder, the poet of the small and homey” (Bill McKibben).

In some sense, anyone who has ever written a poem can be considered a poet. That includes a great majority of humanity - likely over and above 80% of us. Definition No. 1 above seems to confirm that except for the obvious question, “Does that refer to a one-time “writer” or does “writer” infer a continuous or repeated process?” I’ll leave that one for the peanut gallery. I’m more concerned with definition No. 2.

A person who is “gifted in the perception and expression” of something is entirely different than someone who does it as a hobby. It implies a certain level of quality not found in the other. But I’m not completely satisfied with that definition either as you’ll soon see. Let’s examine a few other sources:

The Free Dictionary has the same two definitions verbatim and the footnote leads us to the original source -

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Merriam-Webster offers two similar, but slightly different, definitions:

1 : one who writes poetry : a maker of verses 2 : one (as a creative artist) of great imaginative and expressive capabilities and special sensitivity to the medium

Whenever I am interested in a distinct and concise definition of a particular word, I like to turn to my trusty unabridged version of The Oxford English Dictionary. I have a print copy. The entry for “poet” reads like this:

1. One who composes poetry; a writer of poems; an author who writes in verse.
b. Formerly, in a more general sense: One who makes or composes works of literature; an author, writer. Obs.
c. In select or emphatic sense: A writer in verse distinguished by special imaginative or creative power, insight, sensibility, and faculty of expression.

I have not included here parenthetical clauses, examples, and other notes proprietary to the OED. That would be rather lengthy as the OED has a tendency to be very thorough, including endless notes on etymology. The Obs. in subparagraph b above denotes obsolescence. Other definitions included in the OED were not helpful as they pertained to artistry in a broader sense and the use of rhetoric when applied to fine arts in general. I’m not concerned with that.

Are These Definitions Helpful?
Formal definitions can only go so far. For me, they’ve always been a starting place. For a word is just a word and carries no special significance apart from context. If I wake up in the morning and yell, “I love you,” those are simply words in a vacuum. But if I had just woke up from a dream in which the love of my life was hopping aboard a train and I thought I’d never see her again then those words bear so much more significance. They now have meaning. The overarching question is, “What does that have to with the matter of who is - or is not - a poet?”

The context of our discussion earlier in the week was a critique solicited by a writer of poetry on her personal blog. I believed then as I do now that there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone starting a blog and sharing their poetry with the world. But does that automatically make them a poet?

If we heed the above definitions, it would seem to indicate that such poet bloggers are indeed poets. They do, after all, write poetry. I don’t see any harm in calling them poets for that’s what poets do: They write poetry. There is no truer statement than that. But does it also follow to reason that everyone who writes poetry is a poet?

Narrowing The Poetic Context
I think anyone can define themselves any way they wish. If a person wants to take to calling themselves the Dalai Lama, well, I see no harm done. Of course, if they aren’t the Dalai Lama then I’d say they have a serious credibility problem. The natural response to that by someone who wants to argue their point might be, “Well, we aren’t talking about something as serious as the Dalai Lama!” But I disagree. Poetry is a serious matter and to speak of it as just poetry or not as important as anything else is to denigrate the medium and render it worthless. We have enough people on the outside not concerned a bit about the subject doing that; we don’t need members of our own small ranks doing it. So I do think it matters.

I started World Class Poetry and the World Class Poetry Blog for one reason: I wanted to improve my craft and I wanted to help others improve their craft. There were poetry websites online before mine. Some of them are quite good. But I saw none that focused primarily on offering tools, tips, exercises, and resources bent on helping working poets improve their craft. None. So I thought I’d start one.

While I am no expert in matters of poesy - I am not the know-all, be-all, end-all - I think I know it pretty well. There is a lot to learn, of course, and I’m on the path. One of the ways to learn something and learn it well it to teach it to others and I thought I’d give it a go. Help others and in the process learn more on my own. That’s the idea. But to do it right, I knew I had to define my audience. Who am I targeting? To put it into marketing terms, “Who is my ideal customer?”

I narrowed down my niche to three areas:

1. Beginning poets who want to learn more about the art of crafting a poem
2. Already established poets who want to network with other poets and who want to read insightful commentary on poetics
3. Others - poets or not - who have an interest in poetry but who may or may not have an interest in writing poetry themselves; they just like reading up on arts, culture, literature, and similar topics

I realize that is a very broad audience, particularly that last one. Beginning poets are perhaps the easiest to reach because they are the ones who have the most to learn and largely are most eager to acquire knowledge and skill. Established poets generally come in two types: Those who are too proud of their achievements to receive anything from a third rate hack like myself and those who realize, as I do, that they aren’t the cat’s meow and can learn from anyone - even the first-time versifier. I had my work cut out for me, in other words.

I decided to narrow down my audience into one succinct statement of purpose: To provide commentary and resources on poetics, the state of poetry today, the history of poetic movements, and a place to network for poets and friends of poets.

This statement of purpose gets to the heart of what the World Class Poetry Blog is all about. I found it necessary to define what a poet is simply because there are so many people today who are writing poetry and publishing their own poetry online. I felt the need to have a guideline for determining who I would link to in my blogroll and who I might consider promoting through my own blog. I don’t want it to be all about myself. I want it to provide some value to a set of readers who are looking for this type of commentary. That’s why a discussion on who is a poet and who is a hobbyist became important to me in terms of what I can offer to my audience of readers through this blog.

What Makes A Poet?
Poets come in all different colors, shapes, sizes, nationalities, skillsets, backgrounds, professional associations, socioeconomic levels, and educational backgrounds. You can’t spot one on the plane, they don’t smell a certain way, and you’d never know one if you bumped into him in an elevator. So what does make a poet?

In a certain sense, anyone who writes poetry is a poet. There’s no denying that. But in another sense, and I think in a more important sense, there must be something else that draws a line between a professional poet and a hobby poet. There is a clear difference and I think it boils down to intent, or motive, for writing. It has nothing to do with skill. Many hobby poets are much better at writing poetry than some of the better known “masters.” Sadly, Emily Dickinson published only a handful of her poems in her lifetime, but other poets - Allen Ginsberg comes to mind - published far too many. The one poem that he is best known for and which earned him his fame is so incredible that it overshadows everything else he wrote. One can easily see how he has earned for himself the title “poet” even with that one poem.

So if it isn’t quality, what is it? Earned income? It has been repeated so often that it has become cliche to say that no one earns money by writing poetry. I have given this a lot of thought and I’d have to say that I disagree. Many poets are able to make a living with stipends, grants, fellowships, and salaries from higher education institutions. While these poets may not be getting rich or may not even earn much from the writing and publishing of their poetry books, they are making money from the profession. University professors, literary journal editors, public school teachers, and others of similar professions may not be full-time poets, but they are in a field that is related to poetry and in some cases their professions may afford them more time to pursue poetic interests than the average poet. University creative writing professors, for instance, only teach one or two classes per semester. The rest of their time is spent writing, reading literary journals, submitting poems for publication, and other such activities that poets in other professions have to do as well, but with less time for doing it.

Unless one is able to list “poet” as an occupation on your IRS forms, one likely isn’t making a full-time income from the writing, publishing, or reading of poetry. But even if you are, how much money you make from poetry or in poetry-related pursuits isn’t what determines whether you are a poet or not. That would shut out most of us before the first word.

Perhaps it is more like what one commentator says:

I was always under the impression that the title “poet” was conferred upon someone much like the Queen dubs her knights. In other words, one writes until they have carpel tunnel syndrome and can’t write anymore (hyperbole), and over this same time span one’s work is noticed by others and then passed around. Then this “publishing” engine is started and one’s work is circulated. It either becomes more and more read by others or withers on the vine. It’s the buzz of other poetry readers and publishers that starts conferring the label “poet” onto the writer.

I’m not sure that this is accurate either, though it is perhaps closer to the truth than any of us would realize. This kind of democratic process might imply that being a poet is a popularity contest, and I don’t think it is. There are many fine poets who have been relegated to obscurity for one reason or another. And many writers who “dabble” in poetry have been recognized more for their prose than their poetry yet it would be an injustice not to call them poets just because they were better known for their novels.

Alright then, so what makes a poet?

The Nitty-Gritty On Being A Poet
There are many different ways one can draw distinctions. Much of what we term poetic achievement is subjective: book sales, popularity, quality of craft - these are things that are important in varying degrees, but they are not good measures for determining who is a poet and who is not. A poet is someone who writes whether they feel like writing or not. A poet is someone who must write or die. A hobbyist merely writes for enjoyment; a poet may hate writing, but does it any way. It is so much more an internal being than an outward sign, though the outward signs may give an indication of the internal reality.

One who is especially gifted in the perception and expression

Gifted by what measure? According to whom?

All of us have our preferences. I may like Keats and you may like Shelley. You prefer Rimbaud, I am enamored of Rilke. Mr. So-and-So may admire the Beats and detest the Moderns while Mrs. Flabbergast enjoys the Moderns and cringes at the Beats. That doesn’t mean that Gregory Corso isn’t a poet, or that T.S. Eliot is more of one than Diane di Prima. Preferences are just that - preferences. Nothing more.

While one cannot dismiss preferences, they do not define what is a poet. What does define the poet is his lifestyle, his manner of expression. Not quality, but whether or not he seeks to say what has been said before in a new way or simply repeat what the ten thousand poets before him said using the same words. The verse I just wrote may be a poem, but if it adds nothing new to literature and could be forgotten as just another hack piece written by a dreamer then it likely wasn’t written by a poet. Unless, of course, that hack piece was written by someone who has proven himself a poet before. Ginsberg may have written too many poems, but he wrote “Howl” and so he is a poet.

That is not merely expressing a preference. I have read other poems by Ginsberg that I like, but I have read many more that I didn’t care for. The significance of “Howl,” however, goes beyond what one person admires. It is significant in the fact that it historically challenged what is considered literature and, even a more demanding challenge, what is considered appropriate literature. When a poem gets its author and publisher arrested for violating obscenity laws, that says a lot about the value of that poem and puts both the poet and the publisher in a brand new light. But the light it puts them in is not a light that shuts out all other poets or would-be poets. It brings them in without shutting others out. In that regard, I’d say if Ginsberg had never written another poem then I’d bestow upon him the title of poet.

Other poets are known by their volumes. Most people today couldn’t name one work written by Alexander Pope, but they quote his verses all the time. One-hit wonders and widely available tomes from long dead poets possess more knowledge about what makes a poet than any one blog post ever could, but I hope that one blog post could shed some light on the subject that the tomes and one-hit wonders cannot reach.

To be in the ranks of poets is an honor and a privilege. It is one not easily obtainable, but it is also one that is not easily lost once obtained. No amount of scandal will get one removed from the Poet’s Hall of Fame. At the same time, one can’t just walk up to the front door and be admitted in an instant. Being a poet takes hard work, grit, sweat, thready desire. That is something hobbyists don’t have. It is also something that many hack writers do have even though they may lack in other ways, including substance.

No one person or clan can form up and cast out poets they don’t like. No one person or clan can form up and vote in poets they do, either. Becoming a poet is just something that happens - either by sheer determination or by accident, but rarely does it occur because someone just sat down and wrote a poem one day and through a meaningless act ushered themselves into the circle of poets to be admired and loved forever. Being a poet is not a royal appointment, but it isn’t a pauper’s plea for acceptance either. What it is we may never know, and certainly will never agree on, but what is clear is that it isn’t an open door through which anyone who wishes to make a claim can enter without effort.

The Hobby Poet’s Conundrum
Few people get to report to the IRS that they make a full-time income from writing poetry. In fact, for most people, the IRS considers poetry a hobby. That makes even the most professional of poets living in the U.S today a hobbyist. But should the IRS be the one to determine who is and isn’t a poet?

Tax reporting classifications aside, poetry is both a profession and a hobby, depending on one’s approach to the writing and publishing of it. Poets who write for money will be disappointed when the greenbacks don’t start flying in. Unless they can make a decent living from producing popular greeting cards then they are likely not to make much. Winning contests that pay large amounts of money is unlikely and landing a huge book publishing contract is even unlikelier. As already noted, almost all poets are forced to earn their wages doing something else and writing poetry as an aside. That makes us all hobbyists then, doesn’t it?

Publishing opportunities for poets are not lacking. Get the latest copy of Poet’s Market and you’ll see how many different places you can submit your poems to in hopes of getting published. But would a hobbyist concern himself with such opportunities?

A poet who wants to be recognized for her gift in writing and crafting poems is much more likely to seek out publishing opportunities. She will - or should - make some effort to learn how other poets approach craft, what poetry publishers are looking for, and why certain poets receive the recognition they get while others do not. In a word, a poet that is serious about being a poet is concerned with more than just the mere act of writing it. They are also concerned with ways they can make their poetry better while working toward publication or some level of recognition.

A professional poet is more likely to attend workshops than a hobbyist. She is more likely to pay several hundred dollars to attend a prestigious writing retreat. She may even enroll herself in an MFA program that is recognized as an honorable institution. And you’re likely to find her at several open mic poetry readings each month as well. A hobbyist likely isn’t interested in spending a great deal of money for no return. And it boils down to just that - there is very little return in the writing and publishing of poetry.

Hobbyist poets have a tendency to take the easiest way out. You’ll find them at the local poetry reading because it takes hardly any effort to hop in the car and drive over to the coffee shop to hear a few others read their poems and to share a few of your own. There is usually no money involved with the exception of the price of gasoline and you get to tell the world how you feel. There is even an audience. These people came to hear me!

Well, maybe not. But for about five minutes - or three minutes in some places - you can have a captive audience. People are listening. What you say for those three minutes may be the most important thing those five or ten or twenty people that night hear. Or at the very least, one of them could go away and remember your name. That would be fabulous.

This is not the type of recognition that I am talking about when I say that professional poets seek it. A professional poet is seeking a different type of recognition. He is concerned with being known as a person with an ear for music, or a person whose metaphors are sublime. He wants someone who understands the difference between a trope and synecdoche to say, “I thought the way you delivered that line was interesting in a retro kind of way.” The hobbyist is more concerned with writing and being heard. The sharing is more important than the craft.

Hobby poets may love poetry as much as, or more than even, professional poets. But they are likely not to spend as much time revising it. If you open up the hobbyist’s portfolio you are likely to find a string of first drafts that should be revised but will never see a day of revision. The professional poet could spend hours, days, weeks, mulling over one line or word. The hobbyist can’t wait to get to the next reading to share the five poems he wrote while listening to Green Day’s latest album on his iPod at the family picnic last Saturday. The professional poet may miss the next reading to revise the one poem that has been plaguing him for the last three months. You are more likely to find the professional poet at the critique group arguing about the comma in stanza four and whether or not it should be removed, but the hobbyist won’t come back because she was offended that you told her she should take her comma out.

The primary difference between a professional poet and a hobbyist has nothing to do with earned income, quality of writing, style or tone, voice, diction, the breadth of one’s publishing credits, or whether one is accepted by the “in” crowd. Rather the primary distinction between a professional poet and the hobbyist is that the professional poet will spend hours and countless dollars improving a poem that takes years to get an ounce of recognition while the hobbyist will spend ten minutes jotting down notes just to read on Saturday night at the local coffee shop reading and then never look at it again except to post it on his blog two months later. The dilemma for the hobbyist poet is that he desperately wants to be noticed and recognized as a poet, but he doesn’t want to put in the time, the sweat, the urgency that other poets put into the revision process.

Poetry is an art. Like any other art, you can’t whip it out in a ten minute sitting between appointments with your masseuse and psychiatric exam. To be sure, even professional poets have those poems that “just come to them” in whips of thrashing winds and they have to hurry to write it down before they forget it. Those are rare moments. But if you find yourself writing more poems in this fashion than in the revision process then you are probably just hurrying through. You might be hobbyist.

Conclusion
I don’t mean for this to sound like a rant or a slanted downward glare across the nose at hobby poets. One can move about freely between the two distinctive types of poet and never lose any skin. Many poets start out as hobbyists and move into the ranks of professional poets and others start out with grand aspirations that die into nothing but momentary twitters from time to time. There is nothing wrong with being a hobby poet that a little more seriousness toward the craft can’t cure. There may be a lot more wrong with the professional poet who needs some time in the sun to feel human again. But I believe these distinctions are important, at the very least for the purposes of my writing this blog, and I hope they shed some light on why it is important for poets to take the business of craft seriously. If I can turn one hobby poet into a professional poet that lives for centuries or discourage a professional poet from churning out any more bad verse then I have made my mark and the world will be a better place than it was yesterday. Of course, I may have to buy myself an entourage of body guards in the morning, but as long as they can tolerate my eccentric qualities and don’t mind tolerating a few poetic puns along the way then I suppose it will be worth it in the end.

Note: This blog post took all day to write and went through several revisions. It’s still not finished.

5 Comments a “Are You A Poet Or - Shriek! -
A “Hobbyist”?”

1. carolee — February 17, 2008 @ 10:41 am
   

   First, the essence of this for me (plus, it’s funny): “If a person wants to take to calling themselves the Dalai Lama, well, I see no harm done. Of course, if they aren’t the Dalai Lama then I’d say they have a serious credibility problem.” It’s funny even if you replace “the dalai lama” with “a poet.”

   in the earlier debate you referenced in this post, i was on the side of the first definitions offered by the dictionary. if you write poetry your a poet. i still think that. AND (not but) AND, i wholeheartedly embrace your distinction between the hobbyist and the professional with no judgment about which one a person chooses to pursue.

   The meat of this for me: “Rather the primary distinction between a professional poet and the hobbyist is that the professional poet will spend hours and countless dollars improving a poem that takes years to get an ounce of recognition while the hobbyist will spend ten minutes jotting down notes just to read on Saturday night at the local coffee shop reading and then never look at it again except to post it on his blog two months later. The dilemma for the hobbyist poet is that he desperately wants to be noticed and recognized as a poet, but he doesn’t want to put in the time, the sweat, the urgency that other poets put into the revision process.” (and i would add that the hobbyist poet doesn’t really want to hear any form of feedback/critique except: great poem!)

   this is an amazing post; i’m going to link to it now.

2. how many bad words does the polkadotwitch know? « The Polka Dot Witch BLOG — February 17, 2008 @ 10:45 am
   

   [...] it’s not the P-word you think. go see world class poet and talk about “poet.” it’s the new P-word. Filed under: Ramblings [...]

3. the poet — February 17, 2008 @ 2:43 pm
   

   Thanks, Carolee! I love your blog. I don’t know why I haven’t added you to my blogroll yet, but I’m going to add you in. BTW, I’m going to put a restraining order you - HA! That’s too funny you have that in your blogroll. I love it.

4. Jim Murdoch — February 18, 2008 @ 7:21 am
   

   I think if you consider someone who has acted and someone who acts for a profession then the answer might become clearer. But what about someone whose profession is to act but they can’t get work? If someone has acted then in all fairness they can said I have been an actor but that does not mean they are an actor. It should be emphasised that this doesn’t mean they’re a good actor. Someone like Sean Connery can still be called an actor even though he has retired because for a substantial amount of time he has been known as an actor. I suspect a similar logic can be applied to poets.

   I think saying that a poet is someone who must write or die is the kind of hyperbolic remark you would expect a poet to come out with. Maslow does not include it in his hierarchy of needs. I’ve gone years without putting pen to paper but I’m certainly no hobbyist. When people ask me why I write I say it is because I cannot not write. What I mean by that is that it is for me the natural thing to do to relieve the pressure in my head. It’s not always poetry though. I’ve written songs, short stories, novels and plays. I write for me and no one else. That other people like what I do is gravy.

   Hobbyist is a rather condescending term. Look at some of the model ships hobbyists have turned out and that puts the term into perspective. Many great artists and writers have had to hold down full time jobs and used their spare time to work on their craft (Charles Ives jumps immediately to mind). Amateur might be a better term and, to my mind, an amateur is someone who does what they do for the love of it rather than for filthy lucre or fame.

   I have never attended a workshop or gone to a writing retreat, I’ve been to one poetry reading in my life (and didn’t much care for it) and have written in almost total isolation from the literary community for thirty-five years. I used to sweat blood over poems for months whereas nowadays I rarely find the need to revise and virtually all my poems just come to me; I have written nearly a thousand that way. For over a decade I never even attempted to get anything published.

   So what am I? I am a Poet with a capital P. I literally think poetry. It is what I see when I look in the mirror. When I define myself it is at the top of the list. I am never happier (or what passes for happiness with me) than when I am working on or have just had a poem handed back to me by the wife with her usual understated praise.

   How would I identify a Poet who was just starting off? One thing I would look for would be their passion. The blogger who prompted you to write this post had that kind of passion. They were willing to stand between their poetry and the rest of the world and defend their right to say what they wanted the way they wanted and to call it poetry. That is a good start. I was like that when I was a teenager. I would argue on behalf on every word, every comma.

   The Scottish poet William McGonagall is comically renowned as one of the worst poets in the English language. “Poet-baiting” became a popular pastime in Dundee, but McGonagall seemed oblivious to the general opinion of his poems, even when his audience were pelting him with eggs and vegetables. Any man who would go though that must either be an eejit (idiot to the rest of the world) or a Poet, possibly both.

   I have to say I’m fundamentally opposed to elitism and snobbishness in the arts. I hate poets who look down on novelists for example. It’s all writing. When I was writing my blog about love poetry I looked up some sites to see what was there and most of it made me grue BUT then I looked at the comments readers were making and they were almost all praising the works. You might say that these people wouldn’t know good poetry if it hit them over the head and that may be true but they were genuine, the poets were genuine and it strikes me as a marriage made in heaven. There is a market for everything even the most sickly, saccharine, sentimental love poetry.

   I have a blog coming up in which I talk about my late mother’s poetry. She only wrote a few poems late in life but she poured everything into them and used her limited ability – educated she was not (she was the school dunce) – to render these words capable of holding what she had to say. Was she a poet with or without a capital P? I don’t know. Did she write poetry? Absolutely!

5. Jon Campbell — February 21, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
   

   Hi, I would love feedback on my website. I started a site where people who write poetry send me their poems and I post them on my site with pictures of my choosing. Feel free to send me any of yours. The link is off of my blog. Peace

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