What makes a "real" poet

This postcard was on post secret this week.

I have a friend, for lack of a stronger and more accurate term, who started writing poetry while we were a couple (13 years ago, for about three years). He wrote on a regimen, every single morning for a few hours, before he went to teach classes at the local smalltown university. He never showed me his poems. He told me often that when he published a book of his poetry, he would dedicate it to me.

When we met, I was entering the most prolific writing period of my life. I hadn't written poetry for a few years, but I resumed at the beginning of our relationship, and the very first poem I wrote was accepted for an anthology. This was my first poem ever published, and it was my first poetry reading. He went with me and cozied up to the editors. Years later, he published his first chapbook through a vanity press variation. In great excitement, he sent me the book. I was actually one of several names in the dedications. Inside, a poem sneaked up on me - it was all about that poetry reading, and how horrible he thought my poem was, how he couldn't stand to hear it, how he'd dreaded this all week, and how he knew we wouldn't be together long.

Now he still writes on a regimen, carefully following established literary conventions. His poems are almost always about what's going on in his head while he's pretending something else socially. He believes he'll be the American laureate one day.

These days, I write poetry only when I am inspired. This gives me half a dozen poems or so a year, but they're all good. Some are great.

I used to consider myself to be the true poet, but I've grown to respect him as a poet as well. And his stuff's gotten better.

He recently gave me his newest book, a story through poems about "a failed love affair." I infer it's about his truest love, a woman he was involved with after me. I can't bring myself to read it. I'd rather read a book of his poetry about how horrible he thinks my poetry is.