NPM: Everybody Makes Poets

Martin Earl &
Pontus Carl,
Lithography,
from Studenglas

And so National Poetry Month draws to a close! What a party! What a spectacle! Without a doubt the greatest NPM celebration since this blog's inception!

Well. I don't know about you, but I had fun.

Shall we take our denouement from the patron saint of light verse, Ogden Nash? Yes, excellent idea.

Everybody Makes Poets
Ogden Nash (1902 - 1971)

Poets aren't very useful,
Because they aren't very consumeful or very
     produceful.
Even poets of great promise
Don't contribute much to trade and commerce,
To which, indeed, even poets of great achievement
Are a positive bereavement,
Because they aren't very sensible,
Because they think buying and selling are cheap and lousy and   
     reprehensible,
And this is a topic about which poets are people to whom you
     cannot tell anything,
Because they are people who cannot afford to buy anything and
     are seldom glib enough to sell anything.
Some poets are bitter,
But they are preferable to the poets who are all of a twitter,
But even the poets who are all of a twitter are as dependable
     as Rotary
Compared to what each of them has around him which is a rapturous 
     coterie,
Because every poet is constantly threatened by one disaster,
Which is that a lot of otherwise thwarted male and female ladies
     will go around calling him Master,
And then there is nothing to do but surrender,
And then it is good-by old poetry, hello old theosophy and       
     gender,
And yet on the other hand if a poet isn't fed by a lot of male
     and female ladies who are affected,
Why, until long after he is dead or gets the Pulitzer Prize, why
     he is neglected.
So my advice to mothers is if you are the mother of a poet don't
     gamble on the chance that future generations may crown him.
Follow your original impulse and drown him.

Y'all come back now.

Oh, right. You still have another day to give me frog stuff. I've really been digging what you've produced so far, but still haven't settled on the granola winner. If there are any that you've enjoyed in particular, say so by commenting or emailing me at beechleavesold(at)gmail.com. You will be helping me narrow the precision of my judgement by virtue of triangulation.