What a Poet Really Needs
You'll never hear about this asset in a workshop, seminar, or MFA program. But to survive, you need it, particularly if you write poetry.
No professor or mentor ever looked at me and said, "Poet, take yourself very seriously." No one needed to do that, because somewhere along about my junior year in college, I began to take myself so seriously that when I smiled, you could hear muscles squeaking. This preoccupation with gravity, coupled with the belief that I would one day change the world, went on for years. Thankfully, it disappeared somewhere around my fortieth year, a transformation partly owing to the raising of two daughters. I managed to locate the sense of humor I had lost in my search for truth.
Now that I count among my dear ones a number of young, aspiring poets, I see the same quality. Angst, guilt, and a tendency towards holiness emanate, often to the point where I expect a halo to spring forth. Bring up the subject of a movement in poetry, and if there are literate people involved, you will very shortly have something close to a brawl. At various times, I have heard young poets declare Emily Dickinson to be insignificant, and James Dickey as well. Carruth, I have read, is overrated. Some months ago, one young talented poet critiqued a piece of mine, and managed to create a character to be found nowhere in the poem. Thank goodness we all age.
My first personal experience with this journey to reality occurred in 1971. A junior at the University of South Carolina, I was working part-time in a boutique, one of those places that sold blue jeans, beads to hang in doorways, and rolling papers, as well as other assorted instruments of recreation. One afternoon a tall, athletic man came in to browse, and he specifically asked for a Jesus Christ, Superstar t-shirt. After a few minutes, I realized that he knew only a few phrases of English. I had taken Russian for several weeks, and had the good sense to drop it because the demands of the course interfered with my social life, but I had taken it long enough to recognize that this was the language he spoke.
We finally found a t-shirt he liked, and as he was about to leave, he asked me, "You come to hear me read?"
That's when I knew I had just met Yevgeny Yevtushenko, beloved Russian poet who was beginning to be widely read here in America. I told him I would be there, not only at the reading, but also at the party to be held afterwards at the home of a famous poet who was also my professor.
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