What is a failed poet?

Somerville poets respond

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

I posed this question to local poets of my acquaintance: "What is a failed poet?" I hear the term used all the time, but what does it mean? How do you define a failed poet? Is there such a thing? Below are some very thought provoking answers to this question I posed:

An artist who holds back, obeying current rules or trends whether or not they challenge or showcase individualized craft, generally frustrates readers as well as himself by writing safe for decades. An artist who lacks personal integrity is the worst poetic failure of all.
- Mignon Ariel King (Bagel Bards Poet )

Just off the top of my head, a failed poet is one who doesn't write.
- Tam Lin Neville ( editor “Off the Grid Press”)

Even Faulkner, you know, described himself as a failed poet. Raymond Chandler, failed poet, found his talent late in life...writing crime novels. I was not familiar with the term. Sounds like a good subject for a funny poem.
- Ed Meek (author of “Walk Out”)

To answer your question, first let us ask what is a failed human being. If the question promotes strict answers then we will have strict answers to the question “What is a failed poet”.

But then let us particularize the query to other categories as well and ask the question:

What is a failed flower?
What is a failed kitten?
What is a failed cow?

What is a failed elephant ?
What is a failed worm?

And then ask:
What is a failed baby?

And then ask again:
What is a failed planet?
Or what is a failed solar system?
Or what is a failed galaxy?

I have a preferred answer. It is that if anyone of those things had cause to exist and have fulfilled their existence in any way, according to any place on a range of some Platonic ideal that listed things from low to high, good to bad, quick to slow, sweet to sour, heavy to light and so forth, then they would have to be called successful. That is: they would be successful if they performed their state of existence along any particular position in the entire range of their performance.

It seems harsh to speak of a “failed poet”. Might it be more a reflection on us who ask the question then on the thing the question is being asked of?
- Sidewalk Sam ( founder of “ArtsFirst”- Boston, Mass.)

A failed poet is a person who loves language, but they cannot express in words the bridge to the other world where poetry is supposed to take you. I am a failed poet because I cannot attain the lean, carved from the air grace of the poet's I most admire. I've written only a handful of poems at that level. So, I write what I call spoken songs, and I write fiction. A lot of fiction writers are failed poets. They started out as poets but couldn't take the heat.
A failed poet could also be a shadow artist who wanted to write but became a talker and an alcoholic instead.
- C.D. Collins ( author of “Blue Land” - Polyho Press)

Someone I once loved said that writing poetry is largely a thankless task, and in that sense, for those of us still in the “Tower of Song” no matter what degree, well, we fail and succeed. It's the love of language and the compulsion to capture something beautiful, weird or hidden about the world that makes anyone a good poet.
- Lo Galluccio ( author of “Hot Rain”)

If your poems falls in the forest and nobody hears it you have failed as a poet. Poets write to be read, to be heard - if poets don't put themselves in the position to be heard, either by not working hard enough to be good or are not being good enough to be published and read - then they have failed. They have failed if they fail to make people care about what they write. It is a no brainer that they care about their own writing - not a measurement of success.
- Tim Gager (founder Dire Literary Series in Cambridge and author of "This Is Where You Go When You Are Gone")

I've often thought about what that means and Liz (my daughter) and I had a long debate about it. Our conclusion is that a failed writer is someone who has put their heart and soul into their writing with no lasting results. We all know poets who thrive on being “poets” without much output. I'm sure they anguish over their work but the results are, to put it politely, trivial. Our conclusion that it was better to be a petty literati than a failed one. I'm still not sure I agree, but a part of me would much prefer to go down swinging for the fence in the majors than being a position player in a very minor league.
- Steve Glines ( founder of the “Wilderness House Literary Review” )

There is no such thing as a failed poet. What gives someone the right to call a poet a failure? A poet can only fail if he stops writing. Just write. I hate all this labeling. To summarize: There is no such thing!
- Gloria Mindock ( founder of Cervena Barva Press)

I've been giving more thought to failure. It seems to me that failure is an inability to achieve what one has set to accomplish. And the concept that if one is satisfied with one's own work and chooses not to publish, they too might be a success. I have a friend or two whose shrink told them to write poetry and/or memoir as a method of dealing with their issues. If it helped and they never sent them out, are they success or failures? Then there is the poet who sends poetry to magazine "a" and is rejected, but magazine "b" accepts. What does that mean for the poet? Your question is an interesting rhetorical exercise with no right and no wrong, no answer to success or failure.
- Zvi Sesling (founder of the "Muddy River Review)

Comments

. . . a failed poet is someone who lived in Massachusetts for over three decades and applied for a grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Arts numerous times and didn't get an effin' penny . . . in other words, me.

Posted by: bill knott | July 01, 2008 at 11:55 AM