It might not always be wise to introduce oneself as a 'poet' when asked 'and what do you do?' Some little pieces of body language tell you all you need to know when people start glancing at their watch, looking across the room for some imaginary acquaintance they need to see or simply shuffling away uneasily.
While many poets are perfectly reasonable sorts, the epithet has dubious overtones that usually make me offer some other enterprise I'm involved in, even if I genuinely think of myself as a poet on that particular day or don't. Sometimes it might be preferable to say you are a tax inspector, an accountant or even an estate agent, shrug and airily make some observations about the state of the property market. It is a worthy occupation on the face of it, the equivalent of a carpenter, I sometimes like to think. It's just that the idea of 'poet' brings with it a number of connotations or overtones, or the unavoidable prejudices that others carry with them.
Most harmlessly, but not to be desired, would be the lingering stereotype of the Romantic dreamer somehow detached from the humdrum world, thinking of higher things and with a predilection for swooning. Long hair (on a bloke), some disarray or eccentricity of dress sense or a distracted manner might be identifying aspects of one of these. It's an old-fashioned idea in many ways but still, I imagine, with some currency.
One might be suspected of some self-regard, announcing one's poetic calling, as if you valued your own wit, insight and use of language above that of lesser, non-poetry writing mortals. This is based on the assumption that 'poet' is a good thing to be and that 'poetry' is intrinsically a good thing when clearly, and in vast reams, there is such a thing as 'bad poetry'. Thus, if admitting to being any sort of poet, I generally add that I'm not a very good one. The responsibility to be consistently profound, original or hilarious in conversation is far too much pressure to bear.
Among any other assumptions one might trigger would be that relatively modern curse of poetry which could be that you are 'difficult'. This would be the worst situation and, if poets do have a bad name that has only journalists, politicians and bankers as obvious types to put below it, then there is a certain faction among them who brought it upon the profession and it is they who really need to be identified and separated off from the otherwise less blameworthy majority of peaceable wordsmiths who, in Auden's phrase, are never going to make anything happen.
Ezra Pound, of course, must take his fair share of the rap. There possibly was difficult poetry before him but it became part of the agenda for a significant number of poets roughly 100 years ago. By no means all of Pound's manifesto was damaging and, as a sharpening up exercise, his legacy had arguably as many beneficial effects as bad ones. However, individuals will pick and choose for themselves which parts of a menu they will find to their taste and the tradition that remained high church modernist, translating into areas of the precious 'avant garde', are those that took to heart the maxim that poetry should be difficult.
Why anybody would want anything to be difficult when it doesn't have to be is as mystifying as their poems, especially in the light of Homer Simpson's wise advice that 'if something's hard to do then it isn't worth doing'. I had some trouble with Prof. John Fuller's argument in Who is Ozymandias, that poetry presents puzzles that the reader enjoys solving. I don't. I don't necessarily want one reading of a poem to reveal all I'm ever going to find to appreciate in it but neither do I want it to be unfathomable and, in the end, I'm often happy for my understanding to be incomplete if I've enjoyed the outing. In fact, I'm not sure one can ever be certain that something has ever been fully understood or if it is desirable for it to be reduced to that.
I can see that some readers will enjoy difficulty. Whether that needs to be a prerequisite of poetry when there is The Listener crossword to be done every week in The Observer to satisfy those savants, I would doubt, though. But if difficulty depends on a thorough grounding in classical references and etymology for interpretation then there are many of us who will make little progress however hard we study the lines. Geoffrey Hill tells us that poetry is not 'self expression' and I like the idea although it does rather torpedo anyone who feels like expressing themselves in verses. But certainly, a poem is often best regarded as a free-standing thng, succeeding or otherwise on its own terms.
The enemy within are those that deliberately set out to be difficult, even going to the trouble of attacking those for who some degree of clarity was regarded as a virtue, and then complaining that some of their potential audience are philistine for finding it difficult. These poets are affronted by the lack of gratitude they encounter from the dismal 'mainstream' (which means everybody except them). And, yes, as you can now see, I've arrived at my old sore point, the itch that I have to scratch once in a while.
Why should we be surprised that if someone deliberately sports what they consider strange attire that they are once in a while met with raised eyebrows or the non-committal gestures of a cartoon Frenchman by those who accept that, yes, okay, that is a bit strange, isn't it. We cling to whatever remains of our liberal culture and welcome all comers but if they take great pains to make themselves obtuse and then are recognized for their obtuseness then it is nobody's fault but theirs.
Of course, there is no stereotype with which to define the generic class of 'poets' and if some of the vestigial impressions of poetry weren't the fault of the poets themselves in the first place, it's a shame that one of them is ostensibly actively encouraged. By those who then take great pleasure in complaining about it.
So, next time I'm asked, Oh, are you a poet, I'll probably shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other, glance down at my diminished glass of wine and remark how property prices in the area have been flat-lining for a long time now.