by Stazja MacFadyen

Georgia Klipple, a past president of the Austin Poetry Society, called me "a real poet." I like the sound of that, but I'm not sure what it really means and I've been trying to figure it out. I think it's a mixed blessing, a crown of thorns, so to speak.

I've written poetry since I learned to write. My first poem was published when I was six years old. Even before that, poetry was an indulgent great uncle, fondly tempering reality with art, softening the world's hardness as I approached, putting bumps and bruises into perspective. Poetry taught me things about life. And gave me a voice to answer back.

Dr. Seuss was my first favorite poet. His "nonsense" rhymes were brilliantly crafted with wry wit and imagination, imparting wisdom at a child's level of understanding. For example, Thidwick, the Big-Hearted Moose did more than amuse me; it gently illustrated humiliating consequences for the submissive moose who just couldn't say "no" when other animals came to live in his antlers. He suffered ostracism from his herd and eventually imperiled his life. If Nature hadn't intervened, causing Thidwick to shed his antlers just in the knick of time, he would have fallen to the sporting hunters' bullets. I was a preschooler incapable of articulating the complex concept; still, I grasped the essence.

Poetry has influenced me more than family, teachers or evening news. During adolescence, I came alive absorbed in the melodramatic tradegy of Alfred Noyes' The Highwayman, the macabre romanticism of Poe's The Raven, the impossibly idealistic nobility of Kipling's If, and William Ernest Henley's Invictus. Vowing, after reading Ferlinghetti and Kerouac, that I would go on the road someday -- I wanted to be a beatnik!

At 15, I read Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, rejoicing in the passage "On Children." I showed it to my father, eager to convince him of the clear and plain truth: "You may give them your love but not your thoughts/For they have their own thoughts." Daddy, a big fan of Archie Bunker's, called it communist propaganda.

I understand what poetry is. It annoys me when poets argue that poetry cannot, should not, be defined, and yes, there are those poets who would argue the point. Even the "poetry" entry in Compton's Encyclopedia states that poetry is harder to define than other art forms. Evidence to the contrary, Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary contains a workable definition that goes something like this: "writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm." That definition works for me. When I write a poem that fails to elicit the intended emotional response, it only means I didn't do as good a crafting job, a more practical approach than getting my feelings hurt or muddling the meaning of poetry when someone doesn't like one of my poems.

I don't expect poetry to replace Rogaine^®, or Viagra^®, or Sallie Struthers. It isn't particularly remunerative, unless you are Jewel, a top recording artist with a pre-existing legion of fans to make her poetry collection a best seller. That isn't my goal. I require it in my life, like breathing.

When someone says, "I don't like poetry," it distresses me. People do say that sometimes. But how can someone not like poetry -- the very essence and passion of the language? I usually don't let it pass unchallenged.

Was it a perfunctory introduction to poetry by the sterile drone of a grade school teacher who couldn't stimulate a Siamese cat in heat if it were humping his leg? Or the mortifying moment of embarrassment and shame, before you mastered the language, when you were called on to stand up and read a poetic passage aloud from a text book and you couldn't even pronounce the words, much less comprehend message or meaning? Berated by classmates who secretly feared their own inadequate reading skills would likewise be discovered? Did you spill your vulnerability in verse only to get corrected for bad grammar? Were you rendered so numb by intricately structured pedantic epics, you eschewed all poetry before you sampled Ogden Nash's lampooning humor or Pablo Neruda's provocative sensuality?

When people are turned off to poetry, I assume something happened, some bad experience. This is my steadfast, unwavering conviction. I engage these people in earnest dialog, wanting to enlighten and salvage them, to extract a voluntary recant for the unintentional offense against my beloved muse. More often than not, I score some success vindicating poetry, one of my oldest and dearest friends.

Personifying poetry is a poetic ruse, but what the heck. I am a poet. An abstract thinker, I enjoy befriending inanimate objects, even concepts and ideas. And this is where I hit the skids, and bog down in the gray areas. What exactly does it mean to be a real poet? It isn't limited to composing lyrical verse, of that I'm certain. Why a poet? Why not a novelist? A lyricist? A playwright? A forgodsake freelance journalist?

There is something about poets that sets us apart. I've identified this as a common factor among poets, a sense that one is "different." It was my own mother who first brought it to my attention. With all due respect to my white haired mama, I love her dearly, I got the distinct impression that being "different" wasn't perceived as an admirable trait in a daughter. A mildly alarming je ne sais quoi about being out of synch with the status quo.

I once surveyed a room of poets, when I was hosting the "New Voices" readings at the now-defunct Rio Grande Coffee Haus. I had two rules: 1. the audience couldn't heckle the reading poets and 2. the poets couldn't drive away the audience. Knowing how often poets give their work away, knowing how seldom they get paid for it, I guaranteed $10 to the featured poet each week. That reading series got very popular among street poets and alternative lifestyle types, twenty to thirty sign ups every week, standing room only. We listened to each other, reached poetic highs grooving on the words. So one night I asked for a show of hands: who among them felt they were different from other people, or had been made to feel different. The response was unanimous.

It isn't all square pegs in round holes. Through poetry I have found camaraderie. And the poets don't even have to be alive, necessarily. Their words come through time, through pages and web sites, reassuring me that no matter how bloodied is my head, I'm among friends.

I asked my live poet friend Larry Jaffe what makes a person a poet. "They got rhythm," he said, "and soul. Conscience. An uncanny eye for the truth."

"Wow," I said, "those are all good things."

"We fly," he continued, "but we ain't perfect. We fly on stage or on paper." Adding, "I don't know if I am right or not."

That pretty well sums up the way I feel about it, too.