Being a Poet and Writing Poetry

Following on from yesterday's thoughts about what we call ourselves as writers and artists, I have some quotations by Ted Kooser (the current U.S. Poet Laureate) from his book The Poetry Home Repair Manual [with thanks to Susan, who sent them along.]

[Explaining how he got interested in poetry because he wanted to be "a poet" and attract the girls; discussing the difference between being a poet and writing poetry]

Today I read poems, I write poems, and at times, yes, sometimes for hours on end, I forget about women. Yet there are still the two poets present, the one who quietly concentrates on perfecting the poem and the one who wants more than anything else to be celebrated and adored. I'm delighted and nourished by the first poet and embarrassed by the second.

Poetry is a lot more important than poets.

[On whether we can have too many poets]

Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there's a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you're writing your poem, there's one less scoundrel in the world. And I'd like a world, wouldn't you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I'm certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don't think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say "We loved the earth but could not stay."

I don't consider myself a poet. I don't feel that I understand or love poetry well enough to merit the title; it doesn't fit comfortably. But I do sometimes write poetry ... I like Kooser's distinction between the two.

And what comfort in the idea that there can never be too many poets (or writers or artists). We don't have to earn a spot at the crowded table, because there's room for all.