Daft punk poets

When will people stop perceiving poets as smushy sensitive types who would be better off trading in their writing pajamas and MFAs for pinstripes, cigars, and a job that actually makes money? So goes Stephen Philip Pain's joyfully sardonic analysis of Poetry For You, C. Day Lewis's 1944 book aimed at innocent little tykes. Basically, Lewis used the stereotypes about poets as silly dolts with their heads in the clouds to argue the opposite. Here are his musings, and Pain's responses to them.

From writing blog Red Room:

If you're afraid of having your feelings stirred in the way poetry can stir them, if don't want to see more of the world than meets the eye, if you're afraid to see beyond your own nose, then you certainly avoid poetry as you would a lunatic. (ibid, 1-2)

Not very convincing? Stirring. Like those stirrings under the bedsheets? Poets see things. Hear things perhaps. Regular Joan of the Arcs. Then CDL elaborates and makes the connection - poets and prophets. Jesus. The little kiddies are shitting themselves. Are poets really prophets? They have the "spirit breathed into" themselves. But hey,

But we must no assume, because of this, that poets are crazy.

The jury is still out on that one.