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It is my fondest dream that I will someday, be able to grab an intellectual writer by the scruff of the neck and teach what is truly important about writing a poem. I strongly suspect that neither Poe nor Longfellow, nor Dante nor Patterson nor Lawson, not even the great pretender himself, ever wrote solely for gain. I know of no great poets alive who are as popular as an “ordinary” novelist. If one has the desire to earn money from writing, perhaps one should become a novelist; maybe then the secular aspects of writing may become more apparent and the intellect may be appeased, allowing poetry to thus be considered in a purer and clearer light with regards to its purpose and origins - for the heart, from the heart.

The scholarly need to parse a poem has, in my view, been created by those who wish to gain notoriety [infamy] by dissecting the poetic heart of the dreamer. I liken such actions to those of a film critic, and its proponents as equally ill-considered for will not my own life’s experiences determine that which I like or dislike. This is not to say, however, that I should not use the “talents” of these professors as a gauge to how I perceive my own writings in order to improve them, for surely a lowly flea has its purpose in life - even if is merely to give opportunity to some entrepreneur to employ a dullard to rid the world of them, or to give a dog sufficient motivation to scratch.

Ahhhh, but I dream - and in dreaming, write fancifully; for who am I but a scribe of questionable talent and even more questionable intellect.

Such is the life of this dreamer - such is the life…

©Anthony W. Pahl
31 May 2002

Page created: Monday, 23 September 2002