of the Imposter Syndrome
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write
W. S. Merwin, “Berryman”
The pay is low, the stakes high for poets.
Not seven in history became poets,
snapped Frost when asked of his reputation
as one of the great Modernist poets.
It’s a fact: the greater their ambition,
the more anxiety poets
feel: not all who attempt verse will produce
the real thing. All fear the stern truth poets
face: their work alone doesn’t create
beauty. Yeats pegs scolds who dismiss poets
as idlers who should get “real jobs” instead.
That they’re wannabes: dreamers, fakes, “poets.”
Pray to Erato, go knock yourself out.
You’ll never know if you are a poet.
A eucalyptus tree
I watched from my window
swelled in the desert light,
filled me with words. Now gone.
I have now lived enough
to see so much splinter
and feel stature decline,
acumen atrophy.
The sycamore I see
from my plains home’s window
steeps most days in haze, dust.
Unsure and hesitant,
I strive only to rise
up now and fly above
the heavy bear, decay,
the stiff, shopworn, and slow.
In fact, morning still dawns,
still requires deftness, light,
a fierce embrace. Spirit.
I want all butterflies
in my stomach to float
up to my tongue, to learn
the language of flutter
and dance and migration.
John Graves Morris, Professor of English at Cameron University, is the author of Noise and Stories. His second collection, The County Seat of Wanting So Many Things, is forthcoming from Turning Plow Press. His work has appeared recently in The Concho River Review, The Red Earth Review, Isele Magazine, and Volume One. A former Wisconsin resident, his first published poem appeared many years ago in The Wisconsin Review. He lives in Lawton, Oklahoma. You can also find him in petrichor issue one.
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