Author: Joaquin Miller

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-09

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9781440054747

Excerpt from The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller In looking over my notes at the end of this second edition, wherein I have tried to answer and even anticipate the eager questions of young poets, I find I may have said too much; given too much encouragement, too little caution. Let me qualify all I have set down in this book, by saying bluntly, that the poet's trade is the hardest trade of all trades in the world; his compensation is the poorest; his triumphs the fewest; not one in ten thousand can earn his bread at it. Sir Walter Besant is being laughed at for having advised that a man should secure a competence before writing books. But Sir Walter was right. And the novelist, as a rule, receives fifty dollars to the poet's one. Another thing to be taken into account before venturing up the stormy steeps of song, poets, like priests or preachers, are not in the line of preferment, either at the polls or at the White House. Suppose that James Whitcomb Riley should ask to be Governor, or I to be sent to the beautiful land of the Rising Sun! See? Yet we have managed our affairs fairly well, made fortune and fair name out of nothing, - have practically made bricks without straw. Yet, while there is no more danger of our asking such preferment than there is of our receiving it, you see clearly that the poet must stand alone. Again, the poet is, must be, as sensitive as a child, and his work wears and wears till his nerves are so threadbare that he dares not take up a newspaper lest he may see something ugly. Let me say again, frankly, Don't try to be a poet if you can possibly help it. But if you must, you must; and there will always be plenty who must. My Notes are for those who must. But better be a first-rate plowman than a second-rate poet, so far as fortune, health, and content are concerned. A Burns, of course, can be first at both. Born a rover and a lover, I have wandered farther, perhaps, than any man living, for my poetry opened all doors and made travel a delight. Then I was paid immensely for my prose. But if I had depended on poetry, I should have stayed at home, and half starved. Take care! I traveled so much all my life till late years, that I had to hastily feed my corn out, weed or flower, green or ripe corn, from the four quarters of the world, as I ran. Hence the need of this revision. And yet, even now, after all my cutting and care, I am far from satisfied, and can commend to my lovers only the few last poems in the book. True, the earlier ones have color and clime, and perfume of wood or waste, and I am not ungrateful for the friends they brought me, but I fear they fall short of the large eternal lesson which the seer is born to teach - the vision of worlds beyond. I have tried to mend this fault in my later work; to give my new poems not only body, but soul. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.