I dunno, Roger and James. Arthur Rimbaud stopped producing poetry at age 20. When answering the question "Who was Arthur Rimbaud?" we certainly round up based on what he did in his youth, and say, "A poet," because that is what he is best known for. But I think it's fair to say that there was a period in Rimbaud's life when he was a poet, and another period in his life when wasn't.

It's fair to say the same about the many of us here who came to poetry-writing late in life, so why isn't it fair when the periods of non-activity come after productive periods, instead of before?

I concede that it's a lot fuzzier when those productive periods come in between non-productive periods. Personally, I think that those of us like myself who produce poetry in fitful little blips of activity, with long, long dry spells between them, are poets when we are engaging with the world in a poetic way (whether or not anything actually gets written then), but are not poets anymore when we aren't. But I don't have a problem with people who feel otherwise.

And I actually do wholeheartedly agree with James that the fallow periods are part of the poetry-producing process.

Does it matter? Probably not. It's just a thought exercise.

Julie, from the time I picked up poetry again (after a long hiatus of nineteen years), I considered myself a poet, whether I was writing at the time or not. My full-time job as a professor kept me very busy, but I would jot down ideas when they came to me, and then I would work on them when I had the time. My mental identification as a poet had nothing to do with whether the poems were getting published (for years, they were not), but just with my passion for poetry and my joy in writing it. If you asked me what I did, I would probably say that I taught, because most people who ask that question want to know how you earn a living. I added "translator" to my mental categories once I started doing that again. Neither the poetry nor the translation has ever paid me a living wage, yet they are both very much what I define myself through.

Susan

I missed a whole swathe of comments. I dunno how that happened. I saw Julie's comment, which I responded to, and Roger's I'm agnostic comment (which was a good way to put it). Nothing between. Hmm. I'm with John on this one. Dylan. His now famous son was involved with the truth about Weinstein. And, to my knowledge, wants nothing to do with his father. Just saying.

Added: Manhattan might be off-putting because of what we know about his behavior now. But I think it's his best movie. I don't get angry, I grow a tumor. (Or however he said that.) And the "character" realizes something in the end.

I believe that sums it up perfectly. And it only took us 81 posts to get there.

C'mon Michael, engage.

Engage? I'm having enough trouble now finishing a decent poem - my desk and mind are littered with so-so half-poems - to spend time writing about writing about writing.

It doesn't always have to be a terzanelle, Michael. Just giving you shit. Good to see you around.

"Personally, I think that those of us like myself who produce poetry in fitful little blips of activity, with long, long dry spells between them, are poets when we are engaging with the world in a poetic way (whether or not anything actually gets written then), but are not poets anymore when we aren't."

What other title can you think of that only applies when you're doing the activity that the title implies? Are you only a teacher while teaching? Only a librarian when shelving books and shooshing noisy patrons? Only a doctor while seeing patients?

I know this isn't really important, but I think the reason I insist on allowing a freer use of the word "poet" is that I object to treating the word as a special word that exalts and compliments the person it is applied to. I think you can be a poet and never write a poem that is actually any good. If writing poetry is, as Susan put it, a way you define yourself, then I can't think of a reason to begrudge a person that title.

Also, do we really need such a restrictive definition of "poet"? Why? So we can shame and criticize those who adopt it without meeting our standards? So we can deny the title to those whose success bothers us? So we can beat ourselves up during a dry period by saying that we're not even poets? When we get too finicky about whom to call a poet, we are perhaps taking ourselves too seriously.

You don't need to be good at it or do it all the time to be a "poet."

When people retire from a profession, they are no longer teachers or plumbers or whatever, but retired teachers or plumbers or whatever.

I don't see why poetry should be any different.

Those poets who consider their dry spells to be vacations or sabbaticals—after which they expect to return to poetry-related activity—don't stop being poets during these interruptions. In contrast, those poets who, like me, expect each dry spell to become permanent and the muse never to return again, are not poets anymore while not habitually working on or thinking about poetry.

I just come out of retirement a lot.

Of course, I may be wrong about Woody Allen. Of course. But I always had a feeling. Well, from reading a fair bit, it's more than just a feeling but I don't want to labour the point. Obviously it's an uncomfortable position to defend and I hope no extrapolation is made from it that I don't think accusations of child abuse should always be taken absolutely seriously.

Like Julie, I often don't feel like a poet but I like telling myself that I am one. Sometimes I'm a poet for 10 brilliant seconds a day. I've never introduced myself as one though, ha.

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Although I have been a poet by "condition" all my life, the years when it felt most intense was when I was in college (and now, ironically). It was my identity. People knew me as "the poet". I was published monthly in the college newspaper. I started a college literary magazine. I wrote songs for theatrical performances that the theatre department produced. I looked and acted like I thought a poet should act. After college I got lost in life. In the intervening years between then and now I have always thought of myself as a poet by condition. Life had gotten in the way. C'est la vie . Recently I have reacquainted myself with the art of being a poet. It's a condition.

If the question is "what makes one a poet by profession?" that's easy: The word “Poet” appears after a comma with the poet's name. They make a living from being a poet. I suppose you can also be a part-time poet. In today's vernacular, gig poets. Wiki will tell you who is and is not a poet by profession.

But I'm not a poet by profession any more than I am a baseball player by profession. Nor does the fact that I've written a song or two and feel a kinship with those that do write songs as a profession doesn't mean I'm a songwriter by profession. A person is not a gymnast simply because they take gymnastic classes. A person who dabbles in theatre and performs in a play on stage is still not an actor by profession. Frost's declaration that to be a poet is a condition get's more to the crux of the matter than some arbitrary prize money awarded to a poet as being the litmus test for calling yourself a professional poet. Every waking minute of my life is colored by my poetic sensibilities.But I'm not a poet by profession.

I had an uncle who revealed to me during a long road trip out west that he had gone through a phase in his life in his early forties when he was suddenly compelled to write poetry. He had never written a poem before that time. He said he wrote poetry every day for nearly two years before the "urge" left him. I never got to read any of it until he died a few years ago and his family gathered up his collection of poems and made a chapbook of it. It was all about his overzealous religious beliefs written in childish rhyme. Yawn. He was not a poet.

The poet Donald Hall, sometime in his mid-seventies, said that he was no longer a poet. He had stopped writing poetry because the muse had just left him. (It returned at the end of his life). But although he apparently didn’t self-identify as a poet at that point, the fact of the matter is that he was a poet. Look it up.


Mark: "Like Julie, I often don't feel like a poet but I like telling myself that I am one. I've never introduced myself as one though, ha."


That’s the truth.
It would take some balls for me to actually introduce myself as a poet. But if I did… It just might be the truest thing I’ve ever said about myself:
“Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Jim... Me? I’m a poet by nature but I teach, too. Pretty much the same thing when you think about it — which I do. Poets think about things like that.”

I would be deathly afraid that if I introduced myself as a poet. The person would likely respond, “Oh! A poet? Can I read you?” I’d have to say, “Well, I am a poet but have nothing to show for it.” I really have to get crackin’. : )

Most likely, since I'm not a very good one (I have no qualms with saying that and I don't think I'm being self-deprecating by saying so. I also have no qualms with saying that I think I still might become a good one, even great. I feel myself inching towards it. It all depends whether I’m immortal or not. Given enough time, I'm confident I could become a good poet. I've got potential : )), I am happy seeing myself as a poet by condition.


Mark: "Of course, I may be wrong about Woody Allen. Of course. But…"

Your phrasing brings to mind a comedy bit of Louis CK that is sacrilegiously, brilliantly funny: https://youtu.be/XLGzFQg_1xc (and yes, of course, Louis CK has some “baggage” to claim when it comes to taboo behavior…. Of course. Of course. But maybe… :D )

About Woody Allen: It’s safe to say that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. We will never know the truth. The courts have ruled that, according to the laws, he committed no crime. His lawyers won the case.

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Woody Allen is guilty of ugly, thoughtless behavior, and for that reason many consider him guilty of molesting his daughter; some of the "evidence" for this guilt offered in this thread (a fictional movie Allen made and the belief of an otherwise admirable family member, whom an older sibling has said was groomed by their mother by age four to think the worst of Allen) are at best cherry-picked (the opinion of Moses Farrow that the accusation of molestation is preposterous being omitted).

But to the thread's point:
Many competition poets (see Chris O'Carroll below his poem here) don't consider poems written to order--even very good ones, even ones they spend a lot of time writing, even ones that bring them far-and-away the majority of the money they earn through poetry--to be "real" poems.

This points to an important distinction between poetry and plumbing or teaching. Unlike (other) professions, to write poetry requires inspiration, and, for most, inspiration lies at least partly beyond control.

Whether people consider themselves poets when not inspired may depend on whether they believe that the next inspiration, or the between-inspiration growth James mentions are nurtured by feeling like poets. It's just as reasonable to believe feeling like a poet eliminates an incentive to find inspiration. A matter, I suppose, of temperament.

You remind me of a Chuck Close quote that I like. It begins with the words "Inspiration is for amateurs."

I remain of the opinion that "I write or try to write poems from time to time" and "I am a poet" are consistent. If Richard Wilbur or Anthony Hecht ever experienced writers block, they were still poets while it was happening.

But again, I don't attribute any romantic notions about the word "poet," and among those I happily call "poets" are those who are mind-bogglingly bad at it, utterly lacking in talent or judgment. What I object to is the sanctification of the word such that people whose poems you don't care for may be called vain or boastful for daring to call themselves poets. The term is not an award, but a bland description that applies even to those who don't meet arbitrary levels of prolificity or empyrean splendor.

Well put, Rogerbob. Thank you.

Another way of making my point would be to say that many competition poets regard their amateur poems more highly than their professional ones.

Amateur poems vs professional poems, Max?Can you provide an example? Some of my younger poems I pick up again, and, in some ways my younger self, with all the obvious flaws, was better than my older self (with other flaws). Is amateur the right way to put it? I think the question posed by the thread is flawed. Dedicating your life to poetry often means being a professor. I don't have a problem with that. I did it. But "poetry as a profession" is pejorative. Because I'm not on the road with Jack Kerouac (never liked him much), or do it passionately in secret away from my wife or hedge fund doesn't make my work any more or less valid, or "natural," which is, I think, the word we're really using here. Except for those world famous poet teachers, right? Absolute silliness. Artists have to make money, too, and it's nice to teach what you love.

The notion of a professional poet is a contradiction in terms. The poet is, of course, not professional. That contradicts what a poet is.

Duncan

And, Max, don't try to be high and mighty about Woody Allen. You saying his behavior has left him vulnerable to unwarranted accusations. I never presented what I know about the case as fact, or evidence. Have you ever been involved in such litigation? It's probably the hardest case to prove.

Here's the context:
Then, in response to
I reformulated.
The poem I linked to is an example of a poem written to order, for which the poet was paid, and which he felt inclined to, if not apologize for when it was reprinted at Form in Formless Times, at least to explain how he came to write it.

Never mind.