He was colorful, charming, inclusive. He read beautifully, to a roomful of friends and admirers. Alejandro Murguia was celebrated at the Koret Auditorium as the sixth Poet Laureate of San Francisco.
Alejandro was certainly pleasing. He accepted the title “in the name of the community” and kept reminding the audience that “Everyone is a poet until proven otherwise.” Perhaps this can be said to a group of people who have no interest in poetry. For those of us who work hard and dedicate our lives to the art, his was a very curious statement. It is like saying you are an architect or a surgeon until proven otherwise. Poetry, then, is meaningless, if we were all poets.
We are definitely all poetic and capable of self expression. But then we should draw the line right there.
Photo from SFPL.
Well, per the other comment and this one. Him saying “everyone is a poet, until proven otherwise” may be interpreted various ways. I choose to believe that it means there is a poet in everyone of us, that poetry is the most accessible of the arts, that it is simple to “get on the road” and therefore deceptively easy or non-complex. That is all well and good. Poetry is accessible, anyone who can speak can create poetry, however, how many poems stand the test of time? How many poets are quoted a thousand years after their death? How does one measure the effect of poetry, a poem and so forth and so on.The consideration of the purpose of art in general and poetry in specific is where one may see distinction between the novice and the master. I don’t know where that leaves you, the reader, regarding the attributed quotation, but those are my thoughts, addled as they maybe. Food for thought, I hope.
I don’t care what people say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is
I’m against it
No matter what they said
Or who commenced it
I’m against it
(See? At heart I am a Marxist!)
“Everyone is a poet until proven otherwise.” Interpreted in many ways? I disagree with it in every way.
It should and must be, “You’re only a poet if you prove it by Poetry.”
Re: Sr. Murgia’s statement, “Everyone is a poet until proven otherwise.” I can easily hear it as an innocent enthusiasm, but the “…proven otherwise,” part does something to by brain. It feels like it stops my brain. I don’t want to let that part in. When I do, I no longer hear the statement as an enthusiasm, and re-track my steps to consider that, for me, innocence and poetry make a breathless stew. I’m left with hearing it as a political statement. Politics an poetry and someone being proven otherwise by some kind of process. Now I’m angry. Anger and poetry. I feel like a kleptomaniac.
People seem to confuse the Arts with professional disciplines like plumbing or even dentistry.
If I as an “artist” am putting “it” out there for all humans, it is not comparable to someone who is doing something individualistic for one or two people at a time,like dentists ,plumbers, etc. do. Yes, training is important to do it well, but it only is to better enable one to get what is within, out.