AN INTERVIEW WITH MYSELF
Q: What makes a poet a poet?
A: Poets are people that write poetry.
Q: There has got to be more to it than that?
A: No. No, not really. Perhaps you are asking the wrong question. Maybe what you intended to ask is: What makes a poet successful, and famous?
Q: OK. What makes a poet successful?
A: I have no clue. If I did I would be successful, and famous. Unless you have a specific definition for what you meant when you used the word successful.
Q: I did. I think a successful poet is one who is creating poems that are generally considered effective poems. An effective poem, and an successful poet may not be famous, or even published, but they can still be successful poets.
A: Right-o. This makes being a poet a very odd art to take on, because you can be successful and have no audience.
Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. ~Don Marquis
Q: Wait, wait, wait. You have to have an audience don't you?
A: No way, Jose. Emily Dickinson wrote poetry, had fewer readers than she had fingers, and yet she was a successful poet.
Q: Wrong. Millions of people have read the works of Emily Dickinson.
A: Yeah. After she died. Before she died those poems were made 40 booklets comprising more than 800 of her poems we now call fascicles. A fascicle was a little stack of papers folded into a book and she used ribbon as the binding. Until she died these fascicles sat in little stacks in her drawers resting, waiting, unread, yet the unread poem was just as well written as it was later after it was read by millions. So wasn't she a successful poet before those fascicles were ever discovered? I think she was. So a successful poet can, at least technically be successful even without having any readers.
Q: Why seek readers?
A: All artists seek readers. Even poor ole introverted, reclusive, weird-o Emily Dickinson wanted readers, and expected readers. We know this because she did go to the trouble of taking these poems and sewing them together with ribbon binding. Ms Dickinson expected, or hoped that eventually, after she was dead, she would have readers. I doubt she expected to have as many readers and admirers as she now has, but she did want an audience. Unless you have an audience the creation of art is incomplete.
Q: How big an audience?
A: There is the question. The audience does not have to be big. The cave painting in Lascaux, France were created by artists that could have had no concept of an audience like artists enjoy today, but they had an audience. Perhaps the audience was themselves alone, or their family, or perhaps their god/higher power. If the audience didn't matter you could simply create the poem or the painting and then, as soon as it was done you could destroy it.
Q: Why write when expectations of success/fame are so low?
A: Because successful or not, writing poetry is good for the poet. It is never a waste of time to be in touch with your own emotions and thoughts. Often, you don't know what you think or how you are feeling because what you think and feel is going on inside of you. It is like a child that falls and skins her knee. At the moment the knee is skinned, the pain is intense, and so much a part of that child that the child may scream in agony and fear, and be sort of hysterical. Then mother takes the child into her lap, cuddles that child and says, lets talk about this knee. I think I can clean that up and put on some Neosporin and it is going to be OK. The child is instantly better because before she and the knee were one, but in her mother's lap it is the child and the mother discussing the knee. That is putting some emotional and mental distance between the child and her knee. In the same way, when we have swells of emotion and chaotic thought we are tossed to and fro by what is going on inside of us. Poetry allows us to take what is inside, put it on a page (which is outside) and we end up with distance between us and what was happening to us and in us. distance gives up a perspective that relieves stress, and makes room for problem solving, or grieving, or venting, and stress relief, problem solving, and venting are healing acts.
I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do. ~Robert Morgan
Q: So the artist, the poet, wants an audience. Is seeking an audience a good thing?
A: Hard to say. Wanting an audience can become the primary goal, and if the primary goal is to have an audience then the focus of the artist is not properly aimed. An artist may do things purely and simply to get that audience, and there is an unfortunate disregard to the art itself.
My father said, when he saw me for the millionth time scrambling to please, that I needed to learn that no matter what I did, there would be people who just wouldn't like me. When I catch myself adjusting some line, not because I think the change improves the poem, but because I think some critic will like it, I remember Daddy and leave it alone. ~Lola Haskins Extranjera (Story Line Press)
There has to be some sort of schizophrenic mind game that goes on in the brain of a creative person: one part of you keeps an eye on earning an audience, and the other part of your mind is focused on your art with total disregard of what you imagine is going to matter to other people. You are seeking to simultaneously please others, while only pleasing your own need for self-expression.
Q: Well, poetry is written by millions of people and only hundreds of people are publishing poetry, so the chances that you are going to find a publisher for your poetry is pretty slim. What do you do?
A: Well, there is always the ole fascicle idea practiced by the Boo Radley of poets Ms. Dickinson. The way to do is chapbooks. A chapbooks is usually a small paper (or card stock) covered booklet, usually printed on a single sheet folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages. With home computers, and ink jet printers, and photocopy (Xerox) machines, anyone can create a dozen or so chapbooks. Then you take these chapbooks to poetry readings, read your stuff, and sell the chapbooks to the audience members who liked your stuff. The chapbook is produced cheaply, sells cheaply, and not only can it lead to greater recognition (fame?), but it is fun, and within the reach of even poor poets.
I love chapbooks. They're in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can't sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems. ~Robert Morgan
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