Kooser said he’s had his fill of poetry,
couldn’t bear to cross the hall if Homer
came back from the dead to read—no more
than for John Keats his ode on Grecian pottery.
What could make our laureate portray
for centuries of verse such frank ennui,
forget his post, invent himself anew?
(He said that kid’s books are his next priority.)
What provokes a poet to leave his worship,
turn a deaf ear to his muse, and so forth?
Can a poet’s blood become diluted?
By degrees a sea of college workshops
still churn out a flood of verse, a froth
of ink. Is our old laureate deluded?
—Lester Smith
Kooser Said He’s Had His Fill by Lester Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.