Pedagogy Post 9/15/10 Week 5

I spent a fair amount of time last night discussing with a friend of mine what it is that "makes" one a poet, or what "constitutes" a poet. The conversation remained rather interesting given that my friend isn't currently engaged in Academia/scholarship etc. on a continual every day basis like all of us are for instance. With this in mind, it made sense to me that my friend referred to me as a poet, claiming that I have "the way with words." In my personal opinion, I am a very far cry from a poet. I consider myself to be someone who is simply learning all the tools that a poet might use. More like whipping up a home-cooked meal is a far cry from a 5-star chef. But, back to my original point: What is it that makes someone a poet?  One might make the argument that a person inherits the title of poet once they have some piece of work published in some format or another. To complicate this idea further one might make the argument that a poet "earns their stripes" by gut checking their way through a creative thesis track or an MFA program, spending their time, nose to the grind and so on. As a counter to this idea I'm forced to remember and consider poets such as Emily Dickinson given that all of her work was published posthumously.  So basically what I'm left with...I still have no working definition of what constitutes a poet, but I can be sure that this definition must remain in flux along with the various Zeitgeists that we encounter. What does everyone else think?