Just a note about the poet as a writer and the writer as a poet.

Excellent words are rare, good words not easy and perfect words unique like a passionate kiss between two lovers. Somehow I believe there is always a relationship between love and words, but only a poet can make such a statement or really see or feel everywhere this relationship. For the people there is usually no difference between the poet and the writer, probably because there are so many writers that are writing poetry and so few poets writing novels. But how many of those authors, even among the biggest, are really diving in both oceans of the soul? The poet believes that all in a life rotates around love, and the writer that all in life rotates around words. That's probably the main difference between them. The poet walks next to a lake even when he is in a crowded street surrounded by gray buildings, while the writer should always knows where he is, because after all he needs to describe it. All that matters for the poet is inside of him, all it counts is the beat of his heart when he feels the shine of beauty or suffer the slings and arrows of the adverse world. The writer needs to look around to get inspired, he needs to see people in the face to capture their expressions, like a painter that uses ink instead of oil colors. For the poet all of this is irrelevant, all he needs is inside of him.

Somehow this also recalls the difference between a theoretical physicist and the experimental one: the later needs big expensive labs and machines, while the first just needs pencil, paper and a good library around. Whoever can dig deeply enough inside himself does not really need the world, does not really needs anything but being. That’s probably why in Defence of Poetry (1819) Shelley wrote that Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

(Dr. Divago)