[Richard Meyer]

I took a quick look at the articles. Ho hum. I will confess my sins, if they are indeed sins, and admit to my vast ignorance. I read very little contemporary poetry. I don't ignore it or flee from it. I read it here and there, but I don't subscribe to any periodicals or journals, don't spend a lot of time hunting up contemporary poetry. I read it when it comes my way.

Modernism. Post-modernism. I'd be hard pressed to give you a definition of these terms, and I could give a rip less. I know nothing of the battles and bickerings of the current poetry world, of the personalities involved or the nature of the feuds. It's all stuff and nonsense to me.

If someone has a passion for words, a love affair with the language, a desire to express an experience or idea or emotion, he may well find himself reading poetry from many different authors and time periods and even try to write some poems himself. This is the best we can hope for. If a person writes, he should write for himself and forgo any illusions of literary fame or lasting recognition.

Consider this internet site, this Sphere. Maybe a half dozen or so people whose names appear here from time to time have made some sort of mark in the contemporary poetry world, have published books of their poems, and appear in periodicals and textbooks. But how big of a splash have these people made? Outside of a very narrow circle, who knows them or their works? And in a decade or two or three, oblivion will swallow them.

I suppose anyone who's tried to write anything has dreams of reaching multitudes with his words and achieving wide recognition or acclaim. That's typical and to be expected, because we humans are dream machines. And it's easy, I suppose, for those who have had some momentary measure of success to get caught up in the machinations of the literary world.

But if we face things with a clearer set of eyes, we will be satisfied to spend time now and again reading some poems that appeal to us and perhaps labor over some words of our own, not for book dreams or posterity or literary fame, but just for the joy of doing it.

Richard