We Are Not a Poet [by Timothy Green]

The first person who ever called me a poet was my father, and I haven’t spoken to him since.

I was about to parenthetically aside that those two facts are unrelated, but as I sit here at midnight, on his 66^th birthday of all days, 15 years later, it occurs to me for the first time that they may be quite possibly not entirely unrelated after all. Hmm.

Anyway, it was spring break of my freshman year at college, and I was definitely not a poet—I was a molecular biology major who happened to be taking a poetry class as part of a required mini-minor in the humanities (these were called “clusters,” I think). Undergrads had to take a sequence of five classes outside of their major discipline, and creative writing sounded more fun than any of the other options.

I’d taken up creative writing as a hobby the year before, for equally dubious reasons: It was easy extra credit, a weekly poem or short story for a bonus point on your final grade in AP English. I figured I could write a few words with line breaks on a piece of paper once a week, and then half-ass the essays, which I truly hated writing. Haiku were my favorite, for obvious reasons, but I wrote the forms and followed the prompts. Along the way I felt for the first time that strange combination of stimulation and relaxation that comes from making art, and ever since I’ve written against insomnia in the quiet hours of the night, for the pleasure and peace of it. It felt like I was scamming the system at the time, but Mr. Ruggeri knew what he was doing.

Still—not a poet. It was spring break, early March, which meant a foot of snow in Western New York. When I pulled into the driveway my dad was on the back patio in a bathrobe, three sheets to the wind, grilling meat. “Here comes the Poet Laureate of East Bumfuck!” my dad shouted to his equally drunk friend, Crazy Larry. That was his legal name; he’d had it changed to Crazy Larry, though I never knew if it was supposed to be serious or ironic—he always seemed sane enough to me. My whole life, up to that point, felt sane enough to me.

My father was, or is, I imagine, a pathological liar with a temper. Nothing too serious—just the occasional smashed TV, or a plate of pasta dripping down the wall. And then slurred 3AM stories of his own imaginary grandeur. 

I probably blushed as I walked past them, into the house, up to my room. I didn’t say anything, as I never said anything. But for some reason, later that night, for the one and only time in my life, and on a topic even more innocuous than poetry, I did say something. Muttered, maybe—but expressed an opposition to one of his lies: “That’s not true.” Three words and it almost came to blows. I left and we haven’t spoken since.

I didn’t mean to tell this story, but suddenly I’m wondering: Was the poet comment what really upset me that night?

And still, when a stranger asks me what I do:

“I edit a magazine.”

“Oh really? What kind of magazine?”

“A literary magazine.”

“What’s a literary magazine, like stories and stuff?”

“Yeah, people send us their stories and we publish them.”

I don’t say it’s a poetry magazine. Why not? Is it because I don’t want to become the Poet Laureate of East Bumfuck?

Well, here I am, 15 years later, writing to you, somehow, as Poet Laureate of East Bumfuck. It turns out that was the truest thing my father ever said to me. For the last decade I’ve been editor of one of the largest poetry magazines in the world. I read 100,000 poems a year as submissions, and I have a book of poems, and an MFA (sort of), and I’m still not a poet. I don’t even like most poetry. I love what I love, of course, but it isn’t much, and the rest …

Halfway through college and a year into estrangement I realized that the thrill of a lab bench wasn’t a thrill for me, and that “cluster” in creative writing turned into a last-minute B.A. I worked for a while as the night-shift clonazepam-dispenser at a halfway house for schizophrenic adults, still writing to pass the time, and then was offered this job for no reason I can comprehend. It was like being pulled out of the stands and asked to coach an NFL football team, because the owner saw I was good at diagramming plays. What fan would say no to that? 

But Rattle itself was borne of the same haphazard principles. Alan Fox, the founding editor, is a real estate entrepreneur, a lawyer, and an account first, and a poet fifth. He met a teacher on a cruise, who talked him into taking a class, and a class chapbook turned into Rattle #1. He’s written several books of non-fiction, but none of poetry. The only real poet on the masthead is my wife and assistant editor, Megan O’Reilly Green—she was designed to be a poet; language structures her brain in a way that seems magical to me—and she doesn’t even bother publishing.

So we aren’t poets, and I'm not just being humble. We’re the Island of Misfit Toys when it comes to literary magazines, but I think that’s exactly what makes it work. I never wanted to be a poet; I don’t care if I never publish another book or win another award or read at another AWP. I have no personal investment in poetry—but I still think poetry itself is worth investing in. I still write it for the private joy that it offers, and I still work my laurel bumfuck off sharing the best poetry I can find with as many people as possible, because I honestly think it’s one of the most important things that I can contribute to the world.

I’ll use this week as guest blogger to explain why that is, and to offer some thoughts from the perspective of a non-poet poetry editor who is fully immersed in the literary world, and also set mostly apart from it. Thanks for reading. 

 

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[Photo: Me, still not a poet, at the Long Beach Poetry Festival, by Brendan Constantine]

Comments

[Michael McCabe]

Thanks for your honesty. I enjoyed your bio-blog probably because I too came by poetry by accident. Engineer > technical sales > men's movement > Robert Bly > Galway Kinnel > Poof!

I also "like what I like" and have recently learned to be non apologetic.

[Howard Richard Debs, poet]

Excellent beginning to a week I look forward to of you at the helm of what my hometown paper describes in the header as "a 'best' anthology [blog] that really lives up to its name" -- and I'm glad you let off some steam it seems. Now you can roll up your sleeves and tell us as a person who doesn't "even like most poetry" -- which gives you a clear eye in a unique way, why it matters, why it should matter.

[barbara]

Tim - I often wonder whether anyone anywhere anyhow is truly a poet. I certainly waited 80 years before I dared to use the word to describe myself. Like you, what I know is that words are my fuel. I like stringing them together, hearing their sounds, finding their uses, and most of all - expressing my thoughts. Does that make a poet? I have no idea. Beyond that, what makes a good poet? Only the poet inside me can respond.

[Cathy]

THANK YOU! I don't have as colorful a past, but I do understand the sentiment. I tell everyone that I am a writer, not a poet, because I don't want that awkward moment when they can't respond without looking quizzical. And yet, after three books, I think I'm probably a poet.

[Robbi Nester]

Maybe you are more affected by your father's evidently negative view of poets and poetry than you think, ironically? Or you are rejecting that view with everything you do, which is to be a poet of another kind?