Poetry Precis #5 - "The Poet" by Tom Wayman

Tom Wayman, in his poem, "The Poet," opens the reader’s eyes into the life of a poet by using no rhyme scheme, keeping each line short, alliteration, repetition of negative words like, “cannot,” and, “does not,” and writes in a serious tone. The poem describes a poet with a special personality and truly opens the eyes of the reader to the inside of a poet’s life. In the first stanza, Wayman explains that a poet, “May speak much but makes little sense,” which is true to the reader. Readers will understand this more than anything. A poet enjoys to write and often writes their feelings, but when they write, it makes little sense to the reader because they do not necessarily have the same thought processes of the poet. Towards the end of the poem, Wayman describes how poets may be well-versed with words, but there is a downside to that: they are not well learned in other areas such as, “retaining such things as addition and subtraction facts..” Throughout the poem, the author creates a humorous, yet serious tone to help the reader understand a poet like a poet not understanding the simplicity of an object, or being able to categorize their surroundings, or not being able to understand, “what he reads... what he hears.” All of these happen to be the characteristics of a poet, whether we realize it or not. To end off with, Wayman says that a poet, “may recognize a word one day and not the next,” meaning that sometimes even poets struggle with understanding different meanings behind words. I feel like this describes the thought process of a poet. One day he may write down feelings, but the next day not understand the meaning behind his own writings because he is not feeling the same way he did the day before. Through a serious tone, Wayman brings the life of a poet to the reader’s eyes.