Music is my life's work... and my first love.
So is poetry, and the music is a vehicle to help the poetry roll.
That pulls me along too, so I need to play often.
I learned as a young man that the place for the poet in our
culture is up front, onstage, with a guitar.
Most everything else I do is just busywork, to make the music
possible. I usually don't tell anyone that.
If you want to be a poet but you can't sing and you have no
sense of rhythm, I suggest you work really hard to be the best
writer you can be, but also learn how to sell cars.
The need to play guitar comes
from all the music percolating inside me,
sometimes it just foams a little,
sometimes it explodes.
A guitar is like a lightning rod for this phenomenon.
I can feel it when I get my hands on the strings.
The guitar focuses me down to a point
where chords change in my heart's sound track,
and the guitar makes ladders between the changes.
The guitar forms ornaments
at the ends of the lines of a lyric...
like beads of rain on a pine branch tip after the storm,
when the sun comes out.
The guitar gives strength and imperative to the verses,
and it can show the singer where to breathe...

If you want to be a poet, music is a viable way to make it work.
There are only a few other ways to be a poet and get paid for it:
>Work for Hallmark... (not recommended)
>Learn how to pass tests, and get a Ph'D, and do the professor biz.
This course is only for high achievers (publish or perish) ...and there are
very few high achievers in the poetry biz. They can achieve more (make
more money) in other arenas.
>Become a critic... (not recommended)
>Do all the professor stuff listed above, but if you're not a high achiever
and if you're not into totally cut-throat academic competition, you could
get into government work and administer programs to help troubled youth
and addicted single moms, and juvenile offenders to gain self confidence
and leave the world of drugs and crime... through poetry. *grins
(personally, I don't know how the hell that could work.... that's why I play guitar).