Thoughts About Poetry: 1/30

A question for fellow writers. Have you ever had a friend, a family member or a coworker talk to you and tell you they're a poet?

You might  ask them what they've written, and they'll point out one piece they wrote when they were a college student, a teenager or even a kid.

Since then, they haven't written anything else, but they still refer to themselves as a poet in the present tense.

I get this. In school, most are introduced to poets via a handful (at best) of their poems. In the mainstream, most poets are famous for one or two poems at best. Why not write a single poem and call yourself a poet?

However, what makes me scratch my head are poets who claim to have a passion for poetry who know more than a few poets, who are involved in the local poetry scene, and yet may as well be that one co-worker who wrote a sweet eulogy to their grandmother decades ago.

These self-proclaimed writers wrote some poems years ago. They still perform them at open mics. They may even offer themselves up as a possible feature every now and again. But they don't write anything new.

I know one person who has been performing the same four poems for nearly forty years. I usually can't wait to retire a poem in place of something new and better. Repeating the same poems from my first chapbook? I'd be heckling myself.

I look at them and wonder: How does wanting to be a poet somehow become separate of wanting to sit down and  actually write poetry?

Only in poetry are there so many expectations of greatness with such an inverse desire to do the work.

Maybe it's because the rewards of being a recognized poet are few and far between. Go ahead and call yourself a poet worthy of attention. Your face will be about as famous and recognizable as the last few poet laureates are. I guess you're hurting no one with your delusion, and anyone who can see through it probably doesn't care.

But if you don't want to do any actual writing of poetry, what does the title mean to you in the first place?