Poets!! Poets!! Poets!!

"Poeta nascitur, non fit."

Poets are born, not made.

"I see good poetry in beauty of order and strokes just like a beautifully painted canvas."

Poets are indeed a unique breed.

Whatever the form in which poetry is presented it has much to offer.

I believe that most of us perceive works of the greats in the same manner as well.

Excerpts of Percy Bysshe Shelley's stance on ~

"Defense of Poetry"

"...Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and intersities whose void for ever craves fresh food. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptable of a thousand unapprehanded combinations of thoughts. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehanded inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present, the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which to battle, and feel not what they inspire: the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unackowledge legislators of the world."

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Not all of the poets took themselves so seriously....

"Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Let us not forget to have some fun with...

Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn't impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley and Keats.

- Dorothy Parker

And wisdom as well...

"Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history." - Plato

"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy