Cornel Adam Lengyel
THE POET'S GAMBLE
1. Poetry is one of man's oldest weapons against
boredom, grief and swift oblivion. Though seemingly an obsolescent
form of communication, it is a means by which a man can bear
witness to the truth about himself, his fellows, and his sojourn on
earth. In an age when the nearly universal power of the lie holds
sway, a man may find in poetry a last little survival-shelter.
2. The poet is always a new boy in an old school.
And no one can prescribe his course. He may try to play the classic
roles and wear the robe of the prophet, the seer, the philosopher.
He may disguise himself as a trickster, clown, magician; a maker of
new blessings or curses; a celebrant or a critic of all things
under the sun. Or he may choose to invent a part no one has played
before.
3. No poet is a bore on purpose. He may be dull by
chance; he may be born with a special gift for boring; or he may
have acquired the art by osmosis, through a lifetime pursuit of
boredom. The confessions of a bore seem fascinating to the bore
himself...Oddly enough, when a retired billionaire reveals his
secrets, men listen to him with bated breath; when a poet does the
same, they yawn.
4. The moving finger writes and, willy-nilly, each
poet draws his own image—some in blood, sweat, and tears;
some in ink, indelible or invisible; and some in perishable
excrement.
5. Poets with a passion for anonymity are rare,
and they are seldom disappointed. Of the millions of men who have
lived since the Phoenicians invented the alphabet, how many are
remembered? Of the millions of books in the Library of Congress,
how many are read?
6. As in Pascal's wager, the poet stakes his life
on the trillion-to-one chance that something from his efforts will
outlast his flesh. He risks his all repeatedly; on his choice of a
subject; his treatment of that subject. He grapples, nearly every
day of his life, with Doubt, Decay, Despair, Inertia, Derision,
Contempt, Stupidity—the old invisible company of secret
assassins, all in the increasingly familiar disguises of Death.
7. A writer unreviewed is practically dead. As
Martial observed: "A poet unread is like one who hasn't written a
line." Yet books were composed before the first reviewer appeared
on the scene. What reviewers had Lucretius, Horace, Blake or Emily
Dickinson? One keen reader is worth a score of dull reviewers. A
good writer knows what he has done and may believe that sooner or
later he will be recognized. Unfortunately, the same lofty
self&mdashconfidence may animate the most wretched
scribbler.
8. If men want to read you, they will, even though
critics condemn you and your books are burnt. If men do not want to
read you, they won't, even though you write on a platinumplated,
self-electrifying word-processor in letters as big as the galloping
headlines on Times Square with endorsements from half the grand
puffers and panjandrums of the world.
9. If irritated long enough, even an ordinary
oyster may produce a pearl. Hence the most irritable oyster is most
likely to produce a pearl.
10. All the crowds of young men and women we see
in the streets of the world, laughing, singing, shouting, raging,
pursuing each other, pursuing their vivid or dismal illusions, all
will have left the scene in less than a century. All our
contemporaries are transients. Our vast assemblies are, in a sense,
a supernatural or ghostly crowd. And the present instant, alive in
myself as the writer of these lines and in you as their reader, is
a vanishing point. We both are engaged in a ghostly enterprise. All
that we boast as our works or revelations, all that we build and
launch for the stars, all that we will, scheme, dare and dream, all
that we do is perishable. The labor of our hands: a mound of ashes.
Our book for the ages: a thing of dust. Our dearest child: a
passing creature of perpetual change. All our works, borrowed from
usurious Time, all are perishable... Advancing toward us,
inexorably, our last invincible friend and enemy: Time in his
dust-gray cowl; Time with his legions of collectors; Time with his
slow invisible feet, each step of which weighs a trillion tons,
since his step will press us into the everlasting dust and calm our
fevers forever.
11. No one wants to be a minor poet; each craves
to be great... A taste of glory is like a sip of the sea: the more
we taste the more we thirst.
12. Do one thing well enough to endure. As has
been said, a thing done well is well done for all time.
