The Trouble With Poets

is that they never tell the truth, and if by accident, they occasionally come near to any kind of truth they tend to get hives, or shake uncontrollably. We shouldn’t expect them to be truthful, it’s asking too much. Would we demand a dog cook its own dinner, or a pickpocket play a glockenspiel while lifting a wallet? We who collect words like seashells must turn them over and listen to see if they are hollow or really full of oceanic whispers. The shell of course, (being an almost too perfect poetic metaphor), will then lie to our ear. Mostly and quite contrarily, we condemn the author for having lied a whole lot better than we ever could have.