My guest today is Barbara Loots (rhymes with goats), who lives in Kansas City, Missouri. Barbara is another poet who discovered her calling early and was writing poetry as early as the 3rd grade. She says she even made a book of her poems, but her piano teacher advised her to keep practicing piano. Favorite audience? “I like to write for people with a sense of humor.” Two books she has enjoyed are “Road Trip” and “The Beekeeper and Other Love Poems.” She says one of her unique qualities is being herself. Hard to argue with that! ~ David L. Harrison
Am I a real poet?
Back in the day, when I filled notebooks with writing, especially poetry, I wondered when or how I would learn the answer to that question. This was long before there was such a thing as “creative writing” in school, let alone a college degree in creative writing. Nobody gave grades or diplomas for writing poetry. The only “real poets” I knew were in books. So I studied them. I learned by reading, by imitation, by practicing the craft, by filling notebook after notebook with my poems and finding my way to my own voice. Poets, after all, mostly talk to themselves—or perhaps address something like the Great Universe of Being. Readers and aspiring poets are merely eavesdroppers on other lives. We are constantly searching for poems that ignite a spark within us.
The big step to becoming a “real poet,” of course, is getting published. That involves a lot of rejections. That didn’t help my sense of being a real poet. On the other hand, I wanted my work to appear only in the company of other poets I really liked. Believe it or not, there are dozens of small magazines that publish hundreds of bad poems (you decide!), but I compared my poems with poems I loved. I wanted to write well enough to be in conversation with poets I admired, famous or not. That element of pride—a good kind of pride—constantly raised my standards and improved my skills. I attended poetry readings and workshops to breathe the same air as “real poets.” I wrote for the sheer joy of playing with words like they did. Occasionally, I wrote fan letters and made friends with poets. Every time I discover a poet who speaks to me, it’s like falling in love. In fact, writing a poem is also like falling in love – with my own life.
Robert Frost once said, “I hope to leave behind me a few poems that will be hard to get rid of.” Did he succeed? Now let’s all recite together, “Whose woods these are I think I know…” or “Two roads parted in a yellow wood…” or “Some say the world will perish in fire…” If you want to read a few more succinct descriptions of what it means to be a poet, Google Robert Frost quotes.
In the meantime, here is the one poem I want to leave:
❖❖❖
When I become transparent,
I will be a glass,
or prism or a water pearl
on a grass vein.
When I become transparent,
I will be heaven,
or a single facet
in the eye of an insect.
When I become transparent,
the universe will
a little less invisible
through my transparency.
❖❖❖
Barbara Loots’ poems have appeared in numerous popular and literary magazines and anthologies since the 1960s. Her poetry collections published by Kelsay Books are Road Trip (2014), Windshift (2018), and The Beekeeper and Other Love Poems (2020). For more information: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B01KTZ20CG/about.
