Questions and Answers With A Rude Poet

A response to the short inquiries of Jefferson Carter

Jefferson Carter—

The above, as you remember, was the response you left on a recent article of mine, A Brief Portrait of Failure as a Friend, graciously published in

Lit Mag News

. I have read comments on my work like this before—all a bit different—but with some similarities in tone; enough so that I am practically able to profile its author down to a few basic attributes.

I am usually of the opinion that responding to comments like this is of no use, but this comment is the rare exception and one where I will put some effort into a reply. The comment does ask some questions, which I will try to answer.

I do not know why the line you are referring to makes you question my talent, but of course, if we were to take out all the lines that someone, somewhere, thought were bad, there would be no writing at all. I thought you might go on to mention that “perfumic” is not a word—I made it up, but this does not bother me. Perhaps, it is a bad line. I am not sure—I have written some good lines and some bad lines, too—but we have all done that.

Question my talent all you like, but I often find it is those who mention the word talent that lack it. I would dispense with the word; the artist just needs to get back to their work.

Still, though, consider that it might do you some good to use a little restraint when questioning the choices of others. After all, you do have several collections of poetry, one titled Birkenstock Blues and another, Free Hugs. Titles like these may arouse some suspicion around your own word choices as a matter of taste. These titles may betray the merit of your hard work as a poet.

I could wager that it is not the line that you mentioned that bothers you at all—it is more likely the nature of the piece, the anti-academic, speaking-from-experience tone that the portrait strikes throughout. You have plucked out a line as a form of humiliation. If I had to nail it to a phrase, it was the “better than professionals and professors” line that grated you. That is pure conjecture, sure, but it is based on some experience.

You sling the inquiry about my “obsessive need to become an ‘artist’” with a noticeable ease and comfort. Those are your words, not mine. As a poet yourself, you could choose to be more empathetic to a writer several decades your junior.

Empathy—I don’t need it from you, but this comment strikes an odd chord. Artists often relate to the obsessive need to create—to create yourself through the methods of a craft. One could make the argument that you cannot become an artist at all unless you are obsessive about it.

Your use of quotations when referring to the artist seems quite strange, purposely insulting at worst, completely unnecessary at best. As though through quotations, you aim to diminish the word and any life inside it. Artists shouldn’t always be so precious about their role (it’s life and life only!), but this is especially surprising coming from a poet, who then goes on to ask if the world needs another one?

It’s as though the world should have stopped making poets when Jefferson Carter came around! Maybe I am being somewhat precious here, but with all kindness, in a sense, how dare you?

How much convincing would you need to hang up your pen? If you want fewer poets, why don’t you volunteer yourself? I don’t ask what the world needs before I decide what to make…I don’t know of any artist who does.

I mentioned before the profile of writers who leave comments like yours above; they are always with a touch of white hair, always male, have very few interactions and investment in the platform, and eagerly spread their bitterness whenever, wherever it suits them. They do not like it when others talk about their life or their experiences. You can sense they need to fully own those experiences—to keep them all for themselves. Their comments are generally few, saturated in snark, and expressed in just such a way that bitterness or envy cannot be completely taken off the table. These comments are impulsive, bullying—they are quite generous with aggression, and so very penny-pinching with their usefulness. All of that is not on you, of course, but you fit the bill so far…

The “struggles of a wanna-be librarian” (whatever that means) can be whatever the hell they want—but, what then, Jefferson, do you think fills all those libraries?

It wouldn’t be the works of all those competent poets and clichéd struggling artists, would it? You might try to show a little more respect than that to your friends within the arts—and for that matter, librarians, and for that matter, libraries.

Your comment is full of aggression, which betrays the hippie-go-lucky attitude you project to the rest of the world. Why question the struggling artist cliché when you have not yet dispensed with being a self-styled hippie? None of this makes sense, Jefferson.

I am writing to you far, far away from where I was born, and whatever struggles I have had would have happened whether I were an artist or not. Art is the liberator, not the jailer. The artist must trudge along, even if attached to a cliché. The world has adopted many strategies to humiliate, excoriate, ridicule, and destroy the artist; that is to say, the individual driving spirit that the artist tries to reach for. Try as they might, the artist may never get there. It is the reaching that they do, and it is the reaching that much of the world attempts to destroy—as if to say, get back in line!

As I relay in the failure essay,

There is still much work to be done, and the knowledge that my work will forever be specked with resistance and rejection is a fact I have accepted.

This holds true. And this piece is not how I meet rejection, but is how I respond to your insulting inquiries. Writing, being an artist, a poet, a creative of any kind, is a challenge, though, as you are well aware. And while I don’t need daily doses of external encouragement, nobody needs you coming around stinking up the place.

I write this for myself, for my own exercise, sure—and also for the poet, the artist. To illustrate, hopefully, that as tender as we are, and as sensitive as we are, we are still capable of slinging a little shit back to whoever needs to hear it. That we don’t have to take gruff from people who act like punks—even from one of our own.

I hope that I have shed some light on your inquiries, and this is met with some understanding, Jefferson.

Best to you,

JSV

2025