Poetry by Pygmalion

Poetry, from Old French poetrie, from Latin poeta. A poet. From Greek poetes, from poein, to make, to compose, to create. A poet is a creator, building monuments of rhetoric, weaving billowing sails from threads of silken meter and coarse emotion. A poet sculpts, beginning with a shapeless block of half-thoughts and minute desires, cutting away with broad strokes of his hand, felling the hammer of intention. A poet adds sturdy nouns to build form and places verbs to build shape. He flicks his wrist and sends torrents of adjectives flowing over stanzas like sandpaper, smoothing and refining. If, then, poets are Pygmalions, then poetry is Galatea, evocative our most earnest desires and

crafted in such likeness of our greatest excellence that we bow our minds to its persuasions and give of our vitality to its worship.