He’s not a poet
And didn’t know it
What is it that made me think I could do this for a living? A Bachelor’s degree in English and one small victory just after college. An independent internet press picked up two of my poems. Wouldn’t you know it? It folded before they were published. My one accomplishment in letters, and there is nothing to show for it.
And they weren’t even my real work. I had this idea that I was going to add something to the poetic discourse. I had something new. That is why no publisher would touch it. It was too smart. Too cutting edge. I had rediscovered one of the Dadaist composition techniques. The fold-in may have had its heyday nearly a century ago, but I was seeing it with fresh eyes. Eyes that had seen the new millennium. Eyes that had seen the rise of the internet. Of social media. Of Twitter.
I had something that the Dadaists of the 1920s didn’t. I had my own writings to fold together. The essays, fictions, and poems from my college days. Nobody else had my writings. Nobody else had my ideas. I could take my mass of folded-in gibberish and find the important parts bring them together into poetry. It would be beautiful. People would love it. They would emulate me. I would win awards. I would sell poetry.
And here I am just another hack pumping out my ravings into the ether. What a sham! What a scam! What a dickhead!
