An Exalted Title

For a long time, being called a poet made me uncomfortable, but now I’m beginning to think I could call myself one…and I’m not sure how I feel.

“Poet” feels like a title—Wordsworth was a poet, Keats was a poet, as was Dickinson, Eliot, Hughes, Auden, Bishop, and countless others who, besides writing great poems, earned some reverence from readers. I write poetry but—being largely unpublished and almost entirely unknown—I have only earned the title “Someone who writes poetry.”

Or maybe, “Someone who tries very hard—his hardest from his perspective—to write according to his vision of what decent poetry is.” My reluctance to be called “poet” has little to do with engaging in the activity—I have no hang-up with the title “teacher,” “accountant,” “plumber,” “metal worker,” or “toll booth attendant.” My objection has more to do with my view of poetry. Edith Sitwell called poetry, “The deification of reality” and maybe that’s what I’m expecting, a secular priest, a shaman, or at the very least a pretty damn good professional magician.

I’m expecting something of universal instead of personal value.

And I’m expecting a lofty experience from writing a poem. I still have the poems I wrote as a junior high and high school student. They are truly horrible, but their tone is uniformly reverent, as if every time I wrote I thought, this time, I might stumble on truth, the last statement, an incantation to open a world of new awareness.

And though I began to understand poetry in a more technical sense later when I studied how to write it, I still thought about writing THE poem and making that mythical leap closer to universal value….and publication…and fame.

I think of poetry differently now. H. L. Mencken said, “A poet more than thirty years old is an overgrown child.” I haven’t a child’s idealism or belief anymore. On one level, writing a poem is an action—albeit, when it goes well, an immensely satisfying action. I once thought I might meet God in seven dimensions or hear Him or Her in nineteen-part harmony. Now, I’m not sure I ever have met Him or Her…or, for that matter, that what we call “God” is anything anyone can imagine.

I’m assembling words as best I can, hoping for a little Guidance greater than simple technical decision making. Is that a good development?

In his 1902 book Varieties of Religious Experience, William James argued a truth’s worth exists independently from its origin. He said, whether a religious leader’s revelation came from schizophrenia, from moldy wheat, or from an actual visit from God on a goodwill tour, the origin has no bearing on the revelation’s value. Perhaps my poems don’t have to arise from epiphanies or visionary breakthroughs—maybe rapture needn’t be accompanied by parting clouds or soaring music.

Oddly, I do like my poetry a little more now that I’m not trying to find God. That was much too much pressure. Yet it doesn’t feel quite the same without the hope of ecstasy.

One of my friends tells me that, when he paints, the emotion of the moment makes its way into the work unconsciously, that the fabric of that moment is the fabric of the piece he’s created—directly, without his assuring it, without his needing to.

And for me writing poetry is an action? How boring.

As long as you expect nothing more than a poem, any poem, anyone can be a poet. So, now that writing poetry has slipped from its exalted place and become a thing I do, I suppose I can say I’m a poet. Being able to claim the name might be good news—proof of an unforced, uninflated act, or proof that I’m content with my place in the distant suburbs of Parnassus. Progress. But I’m not sure.

After all, I never wanted to be a pipe fitter, carpenter, or airline pilot. I wanted to be a poet. Now that I can almost say I am one, I’m wondering…is that good?