This article is directed mostly towards younger or emerging poets. However, older ones like myself can still benefit from the lesson of "seize the day” even if we elders have more trouble sustaining the energy to pull it off.
If you are young enough to wonder who you are or young enough that time seems to move slowly—if you love to write poetry and are convinced you have the talent—then I advise you to look down the road at least 30 years. Imagine where you will be. Imagine where you want to be. Make a decision regarding poetry. In the future do you wish to be considered a poet or a business entrepreneur, a poet or a doctor, a poet or a secretary?--you get the idea. Sometimes you can be more than one thing, but poetry does not easily get along with another unrelated career.
I have always felt like a poet but have not always followed my heart. Perhaps I loved money and comfort too much. That is always a trap of life. It's true that sometimes one can't help but be caught in the trap because the need to survive trumps all.
Be advised that if you choose a career as poet, you are unlikely to eke out an existence from it. Almost all poets work at full-time jobs where writing poems isn't in their job descriptions. Many poets take the educator's route, getting either an advanced English degree or an MFA. This is the most likely way that you can live at least in the periphery of poetry for a large portion of your life, but it's not the way for everyone.
I have much more patience now than when younger, but patience is still not one of my virtues. I never felt comfortable teaching writing (because you cannot teach talent) and didn't feel that I could avoid boredom by teaching English literature. To each his own, but I made the choice decades ago not to become an academic. I'm glad I didn't. I'm sorry I didn't.
It is very difficult to be successful as a poet—no matter your talent level-- if you have no connections to academia. Let's face it, the universities still control what and who are considered worth studying or knowing, and particularly those who are studied in textbooks posthumously. I've made a blanket statement, of course, and there are quite a few exceptions. It's important to understand, however, that readership is lower on average for non-academic poets. If you want the quickest route to recognition, get an advanced degree, write, and teach.
On the other hand, if you are like me, you prefer to be an observer beyond the walls of an institution. You prefer not to be structured by an MFA that has taught you how to write within a rather small academic paradigm. You might find more self-fulfillment in a career that helps others, for example. The caveat is that if poetry is your true love, you should not select a career that robs your soul, that does not give you enough time to write.
Please do not view this article as an attack on MFA programs or academia. I'm glad we have both. I just wish we had fewer of the former. As a publisher of poetry (FutureCycle Press), I get thousands of submissions from MFA graduates. I am happy to say that many of them are quite creative and publishable. I am sorry to say that the vast majority sound alike, as if they came from a factory with robotic assembly. I guess my real objection is that MFA programs--it seems to this outsider--have become businesses where most anyone can go to the equivalent of a trade school and feel like real poets when they graduate. Judging by the manuscripts I receive, entrance requirements must be quite low these days.
If you want a career in poetry, however, you certainly have to consider getting an MFA. Just be aware that this degree will not get you a full-time poetry writing job. You might teach writing, perhaps, or you might just teach English 100 and grade a lot of papers.
What happens if you don't get an MFA and you still want to be a poet? The answer is that you should find an occupation, even if it doesn't make you rich, that does not kill you both mentally and physically. Just as an example, I worked for many years in libraries, both public and academic. A job like that is usually as low stress as it is low pay, but it kept me near books and literature, even authors. I spent many a lunch hour just reading literature in the stacks.
Finding time to read is just as important to the poet as finding time to write. But what if you need more money just to support yourself and your family, as most of us do? When my salary just wasn't sufficient, I switched my career to the IT industry, became a software engineer, and certainly made a much larger salary than I had as library worker. Unfortunately, writing or reading time is hard to find when you work long hours or work in a high-stress occupation.
It is hard to know what will happen in the future, but none of us should procrastinate deciding our paths as if we will live forever. If you truly want to be a poet, plan on how to become one. Ask youself: What career suits my interests and temperament? Does this career give me enough time to write? Does this career impede or enhance my development as a poet? Ask about anything else important to you, such as where and how you would like to live.
Here is the truth you must face no matter what you choose: The odds of your becoming widely recognized as a poet are extremely low, even if you are fully dedicated and are well positioned to pursue poetry.
Here is the truth I faced (and you might too): I wanted to be a poet as much as anyone, but life had its own plans so that only now late in my life do I have the opportunity to pursue the art as much as I like. I would have preferred to seize an earlier day. So my advice is carpe diem while young. If it's your dream, plan for it, hold onto it, and follow it.
Good luck.
—Robert S. King