[Julie Steiner]

I dunno, Roger and James. Arthur Rimbaud stopped producing poetry at age 20. When answering the question "Who was Arthur Rimbaud?" we certainly round up based on what he did in his youth, and say, "A poet," because that is what he is best known for. But I think it's fair to say that there was a period in Rimbaud's life when he was a poet, and another period in his life when wasn't.

It's fair to say the same about the many of us here who came to poetry-writing late in life, so why isn't it fair when the periods of non-activity come after productive periods, instead of before?

I concede that it's a lot fuzzier when those productive periods come in between non-productive periods. Personally, I think that those of us like myself who produce poetry in fitful little blips of activity, with long, long dry spells between them, are poets when we are engaging with the world in a poetic way (whether or not anything actually gets written then), but are not poets anymore when we aren't. But I don't have a problem with people who feel otherwise.

And I actually do wholeheartedly agree with James that the fallow periods are part of the poetry-producing process.

Does it matter? Probably not. It's just a thought exercise.