Bob Schwartz

I’ve been listening to and reading poems seemingly forever, starting with nursery rhymes. When poetry was assigned in school, standard stuff like Shakespeare and Robert Frost, I liked it.

At some point, particular poets really spoke to me, as they did to other young people. One sign of when a relationship with a poet got serious is when a girlfriend noticed and so bought me a book of their poems for my birthday. I suppose I was wearing that poet on my heart and on my sleeve.

The first of the books I got this way is Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. That sweet girlfriend is long gone and far way, but I’ve never gotten over Dylan Thomas (why would I?). Lines from these poems still echo in my head from time to time, as recently as this morning: “In my craft or sullen art”.

Who was your first poet crush?

In My Craft or Sullen Art
by Dylan Thomas

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.