N, writing is not a competition. I love Shakespeare's work, and I don't blame him for writing well. I am just glad that he was able to write as much as he did. For encouragement, I prefer to think of Dickinson, however, who was unknown and undervalued in her own lifetime, but just kept writing anyway. It is almost a miracle that her work survived, but it is now acknowledged to be blazingly memorable. I wouldn't wish it to be lost to us, just because Shakespeare predated her. We can't know what the future holds. We can't even judge our own work accurately. If we like writing poetry, we write it.
Susan
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