The Poetry Instigator introduces Ben Wilkins, who will be encouraging NON-poets to try their hand at poetry on the site! Welcome, Ben–and all writers and nonwriters who don’t consider themselves poets…yet.

Ben Wilkins is a 2nd year MFA candidate at George Mason University, specializing in…yes, Non-Fiction.  He has been published widely on His Mother’s Fridge, and in His Computer, and is considered by many to be the Funniest Non-fiction Liason at the Poetry Instigator.  He lives in Herndon, VA and can’t wait to marry his fiancee before she realizes how little money (but, O! The Glory!) there is in NonFiction Liaisoning.

I don’t know about anyone else, but the only reason I applied to graduate school was for the Title bump.  Just by virtue of being in grad school, you get to stop being an ordinary person.  No longer are you Student, or Waiter, or Dockworker.  As soon as you start your graduate program a whole world of exciting titles opens up for you.  There are the usual, but still exciting choices of Doctor or Lawyer, but there is also more exotic fare like Scientist, Economist, and Historian.  The sexiest by far, however (which is how I make all my major life decisions), is Writer – conjuring as it does images of slovenly, rumpled cool.  Ok, so maybe Musician is sexier.  And Geographer – but Writer has got to be up there.

And out of all the genres of literature; by which I mean the general categories of Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction as they are delineated in most university MFA programs (though I suppose Drama should also be included); the writers of Poetry have the coolest title.  I mean that they get to be called Poets.  All of us get to be Writers, but Poets get two and that hardly seems fair.  Plus, Poet has all kinds of cigarette smoke ringed mystique, while Writer of Nonfiction pretty much sucks all the mystique out of the room.  Playwright might equal Poet, if only for its clever play on words and its not-so-subtle insistence that the constructing of Plays is much like the constructing of Ships or Carts or other things that can be made by Wrights.  And although short-storyists get short shrift (that’s the kind of clever phrase turning you can expect from a blog of this quality), writers of fiction also get to be called Novelists, and there’s no lack of imagery to go with that title.  How many of us have longed to be able to drop that bomb at parties?  ”Oh, and what do you do?” “Actually (because it needs a pretentious Actually to go with it), I’m a Novelist.” “Ooh – can I bear your children?”  ”Why yes.  Yes you may.”

Writers of nonfiction do have a plethora of titles, all of which bear a slight scent of tweed, dust, and maybe a little mold.  We have Biographer, Essayist, Memoirist, Humorist (a term absolutely devoid of humor),  - even Columnist and Journalist might apply.  My favorite is probably Essayist, because, if you take it back to its roots it means something like One Who Attempts, which is pretty much what writing an essay is like.  Still, you can’t really shake the “college application” out of the Essay, no matter how often you point to Montaigne, or E. B. White.

Poet has its roots in the greek word poein, which means “to make.”  Which is…well for a writer it’s pretty damn cool is what it is.  Poets are makers.  Not makers of Poems, though of course they are that.  But they are “those who make.”  You know who else makes (and I say this knowing full well that I have an older brother who is, in fact, a poet, and who already has an overdeveloped ego)?  God.  God makes.  Yes, this does mean that Poets who introduce themselves as such probably think their shit smells a little sweeter than the rest of ours, but wouldn’t you with a title like that?  They get to style themselves as the Makers of Language, and believe me, the rest of us are jealous.

Which brings me, finally, to my point.  Why would I want to write for a thing like the Poetry Instigator if I am a Writer of Nonfiction (a Blogist, if you will)?  I guess I’m hoping that if I hang around enough poets some of the mystique will wear off, or transfer to me by diffusion.

Also, and more to the point of this blog, maybe I’ll get to read some good poetry.  The truth is that I’ve always loved poetry, and I suspect that there are other writers of nonfiction out there who love poetry too.  Maybe you’re a little scared to write it – prose just feels so much more comfortable.  Maybe you’re even a little scared to get to know Poetry a little better – and Poets haven’t really helped to curb the growing sense of increasing inaccessibility over the last century.  But the Poetry Instigator is here to help.  The whole goal is to make reading poetry, and maybe dabbling in a little writing, easy and accessible to everyone…with the internet.  Besides, you might find that Poetry and Nonfiction have a lot in common.

Also Liaison is way sexier than Essayist.