genre error

Nothing is more off-putting than a poet disappointed about how poetry (theirs in particular) is not being widely noticed.

written disappointment

A big book of poems, a Collected was delivered today, but a porch pirate snagged it. I’d like to believe the book changed her/his life…or it would be interesting to study the face of whoever opened the package.

not beyond me

Poetry doesn’t need those disappointed poets who have stopped reading and writing poetry only because their work was never recognized.

no promise made

A poet makes a poem not a promise. And the reader’s disappointment is of minor concern.

book as wallet

Like opening your wallet to find it filled with ones and fives, the book didn’t seem to carry any poems of higher denomination.

never apologize, never explain

A little magazine editor is often asked by a rejected author to explain the reason for his/her rejection. Which always reminds me of the line spoken by the character Capt. Nathan Cutting Brittles (played by John Wayne) in the 1949 western She Wore a Yellow Ribbon: "Never apologize and never explain—it's a sign of weakness."

[She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, screenplay by Frank S. Nugent and Laurence Stallings.]

old maps

They come to poetry expecting much. And for a time language itself delivers all: They write some good poems, garner a little attention; a few poems accepted for journals, a chapbook, perhaps a full collection comes out. They are ours in ars poetica. But then the disappointments begin to mount. The taste of success is found to be exactly that. And they are gone, faded back into the general populace, with a few poems tucked away in a folder somewhere, old maps from their travels through the unforgiving country called poetry.