I’m wary of the word ‘poet’

I’m more than happy to use it to refer to others, but I still have a little trouble using it about myself. Does writing a poem make one a poet? How about writing a hundred (the current approximate document count in my laptop’s ‘Poetry’ folder)? Does singing a song mean that one is a singer? Does being alive mean that one is living? Maybe I’m getting too philosophical.

Perhaps it’s because the phenomenon of me writing poetry in earnest is only about two years new, but I still cringe a bit when I call myself a poet. ‘Writer’ is easier, maybe because ‘poet’ carries with it certain connotations. Connotations of writing really good poems, I suppose, and the expectation of a certain philosophical outlook, a certain wisdom and level of experience, a certain lyricism and gracefulness, none of which I am sure I possess. I have felt as if calling myself a poet is pretentious somehow, in a way that calling myself a musician isn’t. I have wondered why this is.

The online Merriam-Webster defines a poet as ‘one who writes poetry: a maker of verses’. I can’t deny that I write poetry. I suppose I am a maker of verses, although now we might be getting into the area of free verse vs. metrical rhythm and rhyme (I rarely use the latter with any regularity, though I like to play with internal rhyme, assonance, and counting syllables to create subtle rhythms and hidden patterns).

I like my poems because I write them the way I want them to be; but when I stop to think about it, I believe I have had a vague feeling that it will take others liking them too, and maybe a nice amount of public appreciation, for me to have the right to really call myself a poet. But I make poems for myself, first and foremost. I make them when lines burst into my head and demand to be written down or typed out and reworked until they are just the way I want them to be (or as close as I can get them, anyway). I may share my poems with others sometimes, but I also know I would write them even if I were the only human on earth. It has something to do with processing and integrating and healing, the way journaling also does, the way time in the woods does, the way music does.

I suppose I’m always a bit wary of defining myself too much by what I do or believe or create, because this is, for all of us, fluid. I generally like to be myself and do the things I enjoy and see what happens.

So although I may not always be one, I guess for now I’m a poet.