Practicing Poetry

PRACTICING POETRY

(Lawrence Helm)

Where is it written

That Poetry like

Psychiatry shall be

A profession

Engaged in with rules

Of success and failure:

So many patients

Cured of Schizophrenia?

For the printed page

Is ambiguous and not

As reinforcing as the

Confessions that a Manic

Depressive might make

In his manic phase,

And if the best one

Does is doubted, then Hart

Crane may off the fan

Tail jump, but even

If a coterie of fans

Pour out their adulation

It may take more than a cup

Of belief to swallow --

As Dylan tried

In his exhaustion.

In his mystical nebulosity

He might, as Berryman

Found, his completion

In one final leap.