350.366 - 2016 project and being a poet

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

being a poet

mostly I wear the title lightly.  I know I am, not by my own declaration - one can't declare oneself a poet - but by my acceptance among people I know as real poets.  so as I said, I know I am, and most days I do what needs to be done.  yes, being a poet in no way excuses one from doing laundry, or fixing supper, or getting one's breakfast.  no, becoming an invalid, or at least partly an invalid, excuses one from that if he or she has a partner who takes it on.  if one is freed from much that being a human imposes, what responsibilities are left to someone who has become a poet?  writing.  thinking.  caring.  communicating.  learning.  yes, I think those are the five duties of a poet.  how can you be a poet unless you write poems?  so one writes.  but about what?  that requires thinking.  one thinks and one thinks.  about what is happening in the world, particularly what one's own country is doing.  about people.  about interactions among people.  about interactions between people.  about grammar, and words, and how they play, tumble, whirligig, delight, defy, and dance.  about darkness, oh damn yes, about darkness.  about the little waking between two sleeps.  about poems by others, current, recent, historic.  about what's new in poetry, or at least the little that you know about or hear about or read about that's new in poetry, and in language.  and so you have to listen to the world, listen to the speaking around you, listen to the speaking from where important people thrive,  one must learn about new speaking and old speaking, and being new in this world, and being old in this world, about stories, about stories, oh my word, yes, about stories.  but always, again and again, about words, and how they work and play and dance and transform.  how people use them, how other poets use them, how songwriters use them.  oh, and one cares.  one cares about people, and about history, and about dear-god-what-are-we-doing-to-ourselves and about people loving and about people dying and about people riding horses or shooting guns or fighting wars.  one cares.  and one communicates.  one lets people know a little of what shows up in all that thinking, in all that listening, in all that learning, and all that caring.  which brings one back to writing.  oh my goodness!  and I have forgotten performing!  how could I?  yes, one finds a way to get out and perform and reveal one's new poems.  and with that, I think I have written what I know about the responsibilities of a poet.  is this an appreciation?  damn right it is!