Daily Inspiration Quote by James Broughton

Broughton slices the poetry ecosystem into types the way a director blocks a crowded scene: quick character sketches that reveal who is acting and who is living. The line lands because it refuses to flatter the industry that grows up around art. Most categories he lists are social roles before they are aesthetic achievements. "Workshop" and "university" poets hint at credentialism, at poems engineered to pass critique circles or tenure committees. "Would-be" and "promising" capture a culture addicted to potential, where identity ("I am a poet") can outpace the messy labor of making work that lasts. Even "lovesick" carries a sting: the easy romance of pouring feelings into line breaks and calling it craft.

Then comes the quiet punch: "and a few real poets". The phrase is almost embarrassingly plain, which is why it cuts. After all the labels, "real" sounds like a moral category, not a professional one. Broughton implies that authenticity isn't conferred by institutions, scenes, or even sincerity; it's earned in the work itself, in a voice that can't be substituted or taught into existence.

Context matters here. Broughton was a filmmaker and a countercultural spirit, connected to the San Francisco Renaissance and a mid-century American arts world where poetry was becoming both democratized (workshops, campuses) and systematized. His jab isn't anti-learning; it's anti-automation. He's warning that poetry can become a costume, and that the rarest thing in an overproducing culture is not output but necessity.