musingsI

December 1, 2006
Life as a Poet
My Turn as a Poet of the World
DeWitt Clinton

You’re kidding, right? I mean, do you actually do that for a living?

Actually I don’t, but without it, I’m not much for the living, pretty much ready for six feet under. But hey, when I think about what I’ve written, and sadly, what so few have read, I do get pretty blue, but when cornered, like now, I often point to my old college professor who really was only a few years older than I was, and is still tapping out those beautiful letters, one stroke at a time.

On the days when I am not writing, and those are most of the days of my life, I often read what others have written, not always their poems and stories, but sometimes their interpretations or often, summaries of short stories or novels or whatever it is we are reading together in my state university English classes. I get a kick out of it really. Some days, I almost soar with delight thinking that I could not be doing anything with more relish than walking into a small classroom and talking about writers and what they do.

But on the days I do write, well, I bet you’d find it a bit odd, that time and space, owned not just by Einstein, just sort of stop, or at least stay suspended while I can get on with a line or two, a stanza maybe, sometimes a whole page. That’s pretty cool, to make something. But then we’re all making something, sooner or later. Isn’t that what we all are doing anyway?

But I don’t add up the checks, that’s for sure. In fact, there aren’t very many checks. And if you went to the Academy of American Poets, you wouldn’t find me, even if you tried. But I still write, sometimes short lines, sometimes long lines, like here, like now. And then I get this crazy idea that somebody, somewhere in this world will actually announce it to the world for those who read poetry, and that would be something of a hundredth of one percent or something.

But I’ve got to tell you of the immense, totally blindingly light-filled satori feeling when I do get a chance to scribble something on a screen, or even old fashioned paper. It’s more than cool, it’s breath, it’s joie de vivre, or something French like that. Most every person who does not write poetry (there are still a few out there as it is so easy to write them, I’m told?) tells me on reading something I’ve shown them that they, too, could write like that. But few can, to be honest, even if you give them white chickens.

So I tell nearly everyone I don’t know that I am an English professor. Oh, they say, Oh, I didn’t do too well in college with my English classes. My father heard the same remark when he said he was a Methodist minister, and they said, Oh, they hadn’t been to church very often. What’s going on? Why is everybody I don’t know apologizing for what they think I know.

Actually I don’t know much, especially after a grueling encounter with Socrates, a philosopher who seems to have really screwed with most of my philosophy students, but in a nice head jolting sort of way. Am I getting off track for you? Students of mine have said that, more often than I’d like to hear. But that’s the nature of what I do, listening to voices, lowering and raising the volume in my mind as to what lines get to come out first, second, or any time soon. Yes, it’s a circus you could say, but I have to tell you, sometimes it’s very good, very good, very very good.

I really don’t pay much attention to the Greeks that much, even if they did start the whole metrics count, with ingenious words to describe a hit on a syllable, or not. I’ll admit the whole order thing is a bit intimidating, so I’m more of a poet who’s okay with the tennis net not only down, but completely put away in the garden shed. But I think I am drifting. Yes. Where were we?

So as you are reading this, wherever you might be, take a moment to turn your gazing head and mind to the window, to see what’s outside, or what’s inside your mind fluttering around. You might be surprised. And then you’ll be the one who walks by as I am off to classes, saying, Say, have you got a minute, I just wrote something.