I
poetry is not a career. a life in language is a life bereft of monetary gain. this is no secret, for who gets paid to write, or read, poetry. i am an amateur. but i'd hazard to say every writer who takes poetry seriously cannot be a professional. a contradiction? only when you define a professional as someone who is paid to do the work, the writing and reading, of poetry.
i take my reading seriously, and read for pleasure. i have not the discipline to qualify my reading. i read a lot and my reading is essential to my life in poetry. i cannot write in language, or live in it, without reading. there is no other qualification to poetry. to be a poet means living as a reader. reading is not a career.
II
a life in language is a passionate life. perhaps passion is a definition of the amateur. for it is in passion that one comes to love, anything. no job, or degree, can bestow passion upon a person. the poet must live and make mistakes. the poet must live within contradictions.
i am unable to qualify that. poetry, the reading and writing of it, is worth whatever the poet is willing to pay. the poet is an amateur who declares a life in language is not an occupation but a vocation. the poet's hands are empty but for passion and language.
