Amateur or Professional?
The easy answer is "amateurs." An amateur, after all, is someone who pursues an activity for love of it, not for fame and fortune. And we all know how few poets achieve anything like fame or fortune. A professional pursues an activity to make a living from it, to make it a career. Can writing poetry be a career?
Both "amateur" and "professional" have other meanings. An amateur is one lacking skill in a field, one who doesn't perform well. A professional is one who has mastered the skill of a field and who performs with accuracy.
All of us who write poems either are or have been amateurs--lacking in skill, lacking in basic knowledge of poetry, its history, its forms, the achievements of its greatest practitioners.
So another answer is that poets either are professionals or amateurs aspiring to be professionals. Add to that that accomplished poets are professionals who love the craft and mystery of poetry and pursue writing poems regardless of fame and fortune.
Years ago, I read a piece by Hayden Carruth, published (I think) in the Saturday Review. In this article, Carruth argued for classifying poets as trades classify their practitioners: apprentices, journeymen, and masters. I have always like this classification--it is practical and humane, works to encourage beginners (an apprentice can reasonably aspire to be a journeyman), and, perhaps, discourages the overweening claim some of us scribblers make to celebrity-hood.
Rustbelt Roethke
I'm home from the Rustbelt Roethke Professional Writers Workshop. It was a productive and enjoyable week. I met some excellent writers and was privileged to discuss my and their work in progress. The setting was good too--Saginaw Valley State University has an attractive, well-designed campus. Most of the participants stayed in a dormitory. I didn't have great expectations of a dorm, but the accomodations were very nice. And quiet, important for an old coot like me.
A high point of the week was a sail on the Appledore IV, a two-masted schooner docked in Bay City, Michigan. Being under sail on an 85-foot schooner was a new experience for me, and exhilarating. I recommend a sail on the Appledore if you can manage it.
The sail may have been a high point, but the excellent feedback I received from other writers and the encouragement to pursue the material I worked on was more rewarding. Participants in the workshop gave public readings on four evenings, two or three people reading each time. There was also a Literary Festival and Book Fair on Saturday, July 23, which included the workshop participants, other invited poets, and open mic sessions.
On Tuesday, July 19, workshop participants gave three presentations, one on creativity, one on the ghazal as a form for poetry in English, and a panel on translation. I gave the presentation on the ghazal, which got some interest from the participants. I hope to see ghazals from some of them in the near future.
What's Happening
Just a brief note to let anyone who's looking know what's happening with The Ghazal Page: I'm behind my (very loose) schedule. Mostly for good reasons. My wife and I spent several days of vacation hiking in Robber's Cave State Park. In a few days, I'm leaving for the Rustbelt Roethke Professional Writers workshop. I've spent significant time on both of these activities and will spend more, of course, on the workshop.
I've made some other, briefer trips as well.
When I get home again, new work on The Ghazal Page will have a high priority. To catch up some, I'm planning an issue of two pages with three or four poems on each page. And I have a new version of the HTML editor I use, Bluefish, so that should aid the whole process.
Some of the participants in the Rustbelt Roethke workshop will give presentations. I'm planning one on the ghazal as a form for English poetry.
Each participant will also do a reading; among other things, I will read some of my ghazals. If you are close to Saginaw Valley State University, check the web page for a schedule of readings and the presentations, email Judith Kerman at kerman at svsu.edu, or email me. I expect to be reading email while at the workshop.
PS/ I'm attending Rustbelt Roethke as Gene Doty.
Goblin's Nest
Here is another brief "ghazal prose." Last year, I posted two: here and here.
Thunder. Heavy rain. Strong winds. Waking at midnight to hear rain rattle in the downspouts. The dog hides in her safe corner. Early June in the Ozarks. I walk the dog in a spatter of light rain. Daisies and Queen Anne's Lace in the uncut grass. She is energetic; the storm finds some trigger in her that gives her even more enthusiasm for running and sniffing. A big tree standing by itself, favored by robins, squirrels, and jays.
Walking the dog in a rainstorm: on the curb, a robin's nest;She pokes her nose in, then jumps back, startled by a goblin's nest.
Winging It
Winging it: improvising but also flying. Taking off from a small space, no lengthy runway needed.
When is a blog not a blog? When months go by between postings? From this point, I expect to post once a week, at least, but expectations often fail in the home stretch.
While poetry and ghazals will be the main focus of Winging It, I will branch into other topics as well, personal and cultural. One real possibility is postings on books I'm reading. Not reviews, but personal reflections and comments.
To close this first entry, here are two shers, the first and last, from a hypothetical ghazal.
The world is danced by charmed quarks winging it
While poems are danced by stark syllables winging it.What terrifying mysteries await, Gino,
At the destiny reached by dark words winging it.