IT MATTERS NOT

It matters not how many
like your poems. Shakespeare
wrote 154 sonnets. I have but
one favorite:  the 73rd.
Shelly wrote “Ozmandias.” I
still do not like it. John Donne’s
piece of writing, which someone
turned into a poem, from which
Hemingway pulled the phrase
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” that
he used as the title of one of
his novels (a common practice
with which I do not agree) is
my favorite. Frost’s poems “The
Road Not Taken” and “Mending
Wall” are my two favorites, but he
wrote many poems (he wrote poems
better than he could recite them).
Emily Dickinson wrote over 1,800
poems, but how many of them
can you remember verbatim?
It matters not how many like
your poems. What matters only
is if they are your poems, if they
come from your heart and soul,
if they write themselves as they
well up in you, not coerced, not
contrived, not fabricated. Do
you like your poems? That’s all
that matters.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks