"Professional poet"?

I used to think, if you got paid for doing something, you were a professional. That was before I became a poet.

Ted Kooser remarked (in The Poetry Home Repair Manual) that most magazines will pay you as follows: two free contributor copies, one to keep for yourself and one to give to your mother. He was optimistic. I’ve had most of my successes in online journals, which don’t even provide copies. (I might have had a hard time giving my mother a copy of SCR anyway.) So far, the renumeration I’ve amassed from poetry amounts to one free magazine, a book prize, and a paid membership to a poetry site... total cash worth, about $80.00. It’s a good thing I like my day job.

Given that those are the working conditions of most poets, how exactly does one define “professional”? Or, since I can really only speak for myself, how can I claim that I’m a professional?

These would be some of my answers:

I claim I’m a professional because I take my art seriously. This doesn’t mean I’m all gloomy and Gothic, or even Byronic (“mad and bad and dangerous to know”). I’m as fond of a limerick as the next person (unless the next person happens to be Mad Kane), and there’s plenty of humor on these pages. It does mean that if people ask: “So, you write poetry?” I’ll answer “Yes.” I will not deprecate myself or my art: “Um, well, kind of.” “Oh, you know, it’s just a blog.” “Well, yes, but it’s not real poetry.” There have been times I might have engaged in such evasions, but they’re pretty much behind me now.

I claim I’m a professional because I take my craft seriously. I work hard at it. I revise poems that I think are worthwhile. I work at improving my poetry skills and seeking out new challenges. I’ve been to one poetry workshop and will probably go to more as I can afford them, and I’ve been active (intermittently) in some online workshops such as Sonnet Central and Desert Moon Review.

Formal poetry is very important to me in this work, not least because it exercises the poetic muscles systematically in a way that free verse doesn’t. It’s like a structured weightlifting routine compared to an hour of improv dance, you may burn the same number of calories, but weightlifting gives you specific goals that you either reach or don’t. When I compare, for example, my recent sonnets with my early ones, the difference amazes me.

I claim I’m a professional because I seek professional advancement. That mostly means trying to get published. It doesn’t happen by itself, you have to go out there and get it. Besides submitting to both online and paper journals, I’ve given lots of poetry readings (been on hold for a while due to some health problems, but I’m going to try to get rolling again after the New Year), and I’m in an ongoing process of getting a book together.

I claim I’m a professional because I support the community of my fellow practitioners. In an online setting, that means participating in communities like (just for instance) Sunday Scribblings and Writer’s Island. Check my sidebar: I don’t contribute regularly to all the communities there, but I do most of them. More importantly, I host such endeavors: I’ve hosted the Ringing of the Bards several times, the Sufi Poetry Carnival once, and I’m one of the co-hosts of the new Totally Optional Prompts site (our homage to the late, lamented Poetry Thursday).

I claim I’m a professional because I accept the calling. I accept the responsibility of hearing a voice from elsewhere. I will do my best to be true to that voice; when it calls, I will listen hard and do my best to speak what it tells me. I will not betray it through laziness, self-absorption, or prejudice. I will make myself a radio, a trumpet, a megaphone, a hollow flute, a seashell full of whispers. I will be the best poet it’s given to me to be. So help me God.