Quote:
Originally Posted by Roger Slater
What other title can you think of that only applies when you're doing the activity that the title implies? Are you only a teacher while teaching? Only a librarian when shelving books and shooshing noisy patrons? Only a doctor while seeing patients?
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When people retire from a profession, they are no longer teachers or plumbers or whatever, but
retired teachers or plumbers or whatever.
I don't see why poetry should be any different.
Those poets who consider their dry spells to be vacations or sabbaticals—after which they expect to return to poetry-related activity—don't stop being poets during these interruptions. In contrast, those poets who, like me, expect each dry spell to become permanent and the muse never to return again, are not poets anymore while not habitually working on or thinking about poetry.
I just come out of retirement a lot.