What is a Poet

Sometimes, we hear that so-and-so is a poet. But what does that mean? Who is a poet? Or, what is a poet?

 A poet is somebody who feels. I emphasize the word “feels”. This character is a personality who expresses his feelings through words.

This may sound easy. It isn’t.

A poet is a person who is gifted or cursed with profound effect, which could also be called heart and mind conscience – deep feelings, sentiments, emotions, sympathy, affection, feelings of fondness, love, tenderness, warmth, and attachment. A poet is a soul alive and awakened perpetually, a sleepless conscience. A scrupulous, upright person living with the principles of high moral standards, strictly honest and honorable, who lives with the burden of searching for the truth.

Many people think, believe, or know they feel, but that’s thinking, believing, or knowing, not feeling. And poetry is feeling, not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think, believe, or know, but no human can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think, believe, or know, you’re many other people, but the moment you feel, you’re nobody but yourself.

To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the most brutal battle that any human being can fight and never stop fighting.

As for expressing nobody but yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all do exactly this, nearly all of the time, and whenever we do it, we’re not poets.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting, working, and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.

So, my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is, do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world, unless you’re not only willing but glad to feel, work, and fight until you die.

Does that sound dismal? It isn’t.

It’s the most wonderful life on earth.

Or so I feel

It takes a lot of resilience and struggle to grow up and become who you really are.

So, what is poetry?

As William Blake said:

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wildflower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.”

What else is left to say? This says it all about being alive.