Life of a Poet, Part 2

I tried posting this earlier this afternoon, but blogger was down.

Thanks to everyone who commented. You made me feel a little less mean and heartless. Cave dwelling, I'll have to pass that on.

Some of you may have already read about the Brooks Brother Poet, but for those of you who haven't, there's a good article in Sunday's Washington Post about him. Is he any less of a poet because he works in retail? If all poets taught or edited for a living, we'd have a pretty limited scope of poems to read.

Last night I saw Kim Addonizio read at Chapters. It was, what I thought, an interesting mix of attendees, all age ranges, people coming straight from work still wearing their business attire, etc. I assumed a number of them were readers only and not poets. I came to this conclusion by eavesdropping on some conversations and it was clear many had never attended a reading before. At the end of the reading, Kim asked everyone who was a writer to raise their hands and everybody except 2 or 3 did. Just shows you can't pick a poet in the crowd. That's right TB, not a single beret!