Why I Am a Poet

I love the questions that my YouTube community and Patreon poets asks me because I often times get lost in my own internet persona as Dimitri Reyes Poet and fail to ask myself the simple questions because I’m so busy trying to demystify harder concepts. My audience keeps me grounded and puts things into perspectives in ways I barre myself. But I wasn’t always like this. As with every writer, before the books, before the poems, before the articulation, there was a beginning; a birth of the “why.”

To tell you Why I Am a Poet, I need to explain how I became a poet, first.

Growing up in Newark, NJ  I went to public school in a very populated city. In elementary and middle school, I excelled in reading and writing. In second grade I was published in Highlights, and I got a perfect score on the writing portion of my state tests when entering high school. I didn’t think much of it at all because since it came naturally, it wasn’t something I thought was marvelous. In hindsight, I wish I started nurturing that skill sooner or at least explored it further. I could have found my passion for poetry writing earlier or at least caught up on some of the reading material I’d have to do later in college or my professional career. This is why when I talk to young people that have an interest in poetry I urge them to explore.

In high school and college, I bounced around trying to find myself. As a first generation college student, my only hope was to settle on a career that earned money. But without a blueprint on how to get there, I floated from major to major, almost flunking out of Rutgers University completely in the haphazard ways I was trying to find myself. Finally, in a last hope effort, I switched my major to English and excelled, automatically picking up my GPA. 

(Fun fact, one of the majors I picked was Music and was an excellent student but was terrible at reading music where I couldn’t pass music theory. It’s good to know your strengths and weaknesses though, and despite not knowing much about musical notes, I have a good ear for rhythm and melody which still helps me perform with musicians.)

In my last semester of my Bachelors degree, I found myself in a class called, “Comics and Graphic Novels.” You can imagine how cool it was to be taking a college class about the ins and outs of comic books but the teachers for that course complimented the class even further. It was that last semester that I met this  wonderful human by the name of Michael VanCalbergh. He was the teacher of said class and was also a great poet.

One day in a paper, I candidly mentioned that I was a “budding poet” and he asked to see me after class. What I thought was going to be a session about my paper turned into a conversation about poetry where he told me to not call myself a “budding poet” where he said “you are either a poet or you’re not a poet.” Little did I know that he was an MFA graduate of the Rutgers-MFA program on our campus and got a teaching job at the University soon after. He was curious about my work and wanted to see it so within the next 5 hours I compiled some of my best work and sent it to him.

Upon meeting up for office hours, he said that the work showed promise and he seemed excited about them. After what I remember to be some conversation about a bit of my background and what I wanted to do after college he suggested I’d apply to the MFA program at the end of the year. With some encouragement, I complied and we started to intensely work on my materials for the program— which was crazy because the deadline was only two months away! Academics generally suggest that you plan for these applications several months in advance so it doesn’t take such a toll on your mind, body, and spirit because it is A LOT of work! But I had support from VanCalbergh and several other professors that helped me and my VERY naive outlook about the process. 

After workshopping my poems for what seemed like forever, writing a creative writing resume for the first time, and having my personal statement heavily edited 3 or 4 times I was readily exhausted and clicked the submit button on my application. Obviously, I was accepted. And what I did in between the time I submitted the application and got the callback was a journey itself and if you’d like that story, drop a comment below and I’ll write another blog! But back to WHY I’m a poet. This is where I begin to build!

So here I am: a Newark kid who never left the state. Whose parents never went to college. Who barely knew what an MFA was 6 months ago before being accepted and now it’s been 3 months since graduating with my Bachelors and now I’m in a program where everyone was considered a professional writer.

My whole first year I felt like I was holding on for dear life. My knowledge of the literary canon was dismal, I didn’t know A Van Jordan, Brenda Shaughnessy, Cathy Park Hong, or Rigoberto Gonzalez from a can of paint, and I lacked the terminology or vocabulary to discuss any material in an engaging way. I was a student among students among highly respected writers.

The first year I worked harder than I ever worked for anything. I had a full load of coursework from the MFA as well as studying all of the phrases and sentences I can pen down from my classmates during class discussion. Not to mention that I was also teaching the only undergraduate poetry class (how I got through that would be another story.) Still, I felt like I was constantly playing catch-up with the rest of my cohort.

By the springtime of my first year, I was beginning to adapt an unorthodox philosophy that held up community and passion for spoken word to an equal degree that individuals held up craft and appreciation for poetic composition. This was in due part to my voracious passion for the study of poetry. Though in MFA programs, it is urged that you focus on focusing solely on the MFA, I searched for even more knowledge outside the University— I went to extra workshops, participated in many open mics, and went to different meetings in order to find different communities. In finding myself, I discovered things about my writer’s personality that I couldn’t get through academic discourse alone.

So when I’m asked Why I Am a Poet, I have many reasons that make more sense once one knows a bit about my story. 

I am a poet because of community.

I am a poet because of history.

I am a poet because of chance. 

I am a poet because of joy.

I am a poet because I write.

I am a poet because I live.

I am a poet because I hurt.

I am a poet because I try.

I am a poet because I observe.

I am a poet because I witness.

I am a poet because I care.

I am a poet because I’ve been scared.

I am a poet because I’ve been saved.

I am a poet because I am a Person of Eloquent Terms.

I am a poet simply because I exist.