Preface



No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how,
but there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made,
and that his verses burst from his overflowing heart of themselves.
As a matter of fact, the poet must learn his trade in the same manner,
and with the same painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker.
His heart may overflow with high thoughts and sparkling fancies,
but if he cannot convey them to his reader by means of the written word
he has no claim to be considered a poet. A workman may be pardoned,
therefore, for spending a few moments to explain and describe
the technique of his trade. A work of beauty which cannot stand
an intimate examination is a poor and jerry-built thing.

In the first place, I wish to state my firm belief that poetry should not
try to teach, that it should exist simply because it is a created beauty,
even if sometimes the beauty of a gothic grotesque. We do not ask the trees
to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army feels it necessary
to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are ridiculous,
but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral
all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only ridiculous,
but timid and vulgar. We distrust a beauty we only half understand,
and rush in with our impertinent suggestions. How far we are