I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet- Bob Dylan

After all this talk about what a poet shoud do and what a poet shouldn’t do, all these discussions about how to make money off of art, or how we shouldn’t try to make money off of art, I begin to wonder if I am really what I say I am. It’s a hard title to live up to, and often words are the least reliable purveyors of truth. Why then, would anyone ever want to be a poet in the first place? And furthermore, could I even call myself a poet? Am I worthy of such a title?
During my conversation with John Akpata, an Ottawa poet, if you were to crack open a poet’s head you wouldn’t get photographs or paintings or colors or sounds. You’d get words. A phenomenon I myself have observed since I began writing poetry almost 16 years ago, I’ve always described it as being haunted. Much like getting a song stuck in your head, I’m haunted by words and until I get them out on paper, they’ll follow me around like lost puppies, squeaking and yipping for attention. Like a line from one of my poems: “I cried out in a whisper too bold to behold a man so different than I yet so clear to me that burnt beneath his eyes are the same words which haunt mine every time I try to close them.”
So you’d think by being in the midst of all this poetry, of having words exploding around me constantly, I’d be able to write and develop. But really what’s been happening is I’ve begun to doubt myself. Am I really one of them? I think what bothers me the most is this challenge that was thrust upon me- the definition of what a poet should be. New words have been haunting me: social responsibility, mirrors, truth. Poetry isn’t just about flowers and love and that stupid jerk you’re obsessed with anymore. I mean, it can be, but it has the potential to be something so much greater. It can literally save lives, change perspectives, ask questions and demand reflection from the public. I’m in awe of poetry that does such things, and I acknowledge the challenge of creating somehting that fulfills such high standards, yet I wonder if I am capable of such things. Am I just an actor, trying to be a poet? Is my act so good that I’ve been lying to myself all these years without even knowing it?
There’s the potential for growth here, that I didn’t acknowledge before embarking on this journey- the potential to grow as an artist as well as a person. To really delve deep into what it means exactly for me to consider myself a poet, and what personal responsibility I am undertaking by claiming such a title.