Poetry writing will always be a minor art, which the public holds in minor esteem. The rise and decline of the creative writer nowadays is usually something like this: He begins with verse—writes poetry, juvenile versicles, and humorous, preferably dialect, entering into the realms of rhyme.
Next the writer promotes himself to the article. The indefinite article is a broad term, standing for a huge assortment of subjects and various modes of treatment.
Next he elevates himself to the dignified title of “creative” writer—the sublime height of the short story. Last, if he is good, he achieves the seventh heaven of novel writing. After having reached this climax, he is privileged to write non-fiction articles, interviews and ethical pieces for well-known magazines, newspapers and websites. Again he writes articles and how-to pieces to sell to publications, and may even relapse into the second childishness and mere oblivion of poetry writing.
“If the art of poetry,” says Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “had been a less earnest object with me, it must have fallen from exhausted hands before this day.”
Edgar Allen Poe once declared: “Poetry has been with me not a purpose, but a passion.”
With every true poet it must have been either an “earnest object” or an absorbing delight—a purpose or a passion; never a mere pastime.
Not being appreciated
Some who write promising verse, but do not meet with prompt recognition, conclude they are not born poets, and quit too early.
The genuine poet is convinced of the greatness of poetry, just as the successful bridge builder is convinced that he
does not need to study science but civil engineering. The real poet takes up poetry as a lifelong art, not as a pretty plaything to pass the leisure hours.
Poet and author Franz Wright said about writing poetry: “It’s a craft. It’s an art. It’s a skill. It is not therapy, and it is not compensation for terrible things in one’s life. It is a thing in itself. You devote yourself to being an instrument of it, or you wander forever in the belief that it is a form of ‘self-expression.’”
Aspiring poets will continue to write deathless rhymes until they realize that poetry is not simply another—perhaps inferior—way of saying things that they could say in prose.
When Thomas Carlyle said that poets shouldn’t attempt to write poetry which they could do in prose, he uttered a truism. Many writers can express the same ideas in verse or prose, but most writers favor prose because it is easier to execute and the pay is a lot better.
Today’s poet faces many sacrifices to pursue poetry as an end, and not as his retired work after he has finished writing news, editorial and how-to articles for high-prized magazines and websites. These sacrifices are no greater now than they always were. The reward of fame and respect that poets desire is immeasurably greater than poets in the last century.