WHAT NEXT IN THE MUG'S GAME IN THE BUCKET

WHAT  DO I WANT TO DO AS A POET?

I have  quoted TS ELIOT and his labeling of the  poet's life as  A MUG' GAME. Let's look at his words again.

"[Poetry] may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves." "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality." "As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. "

These words above were written not by someone who hated poetry  but by one of the greatest of modern poets--T.S.  Eliot

However I  am beginning to see things differently now.  I do see the Mug's Game aspect in the  competitive and collusive world of  Poets, who are  created in MFA programs and then  committed to producing a certain type of fashionable workshop poem. But that has never been my fate--much as I sometimes wished  it were.

I chose  the path of scholar and  poetry was always to me a sort of secret and familiar pleasure associated with my mother and the ways that she  loved to read and write poetry. There  has been an intimacy and consolation for me in poetry since childhood.

WE HAD OUR SACRED RITES OF POETRY 
On weekends after my father had left us and we were a  household of females, on Saturday nights after my sisters were bathed and asleep--finally--and when  Aunt Anna was off at a dance or movie, my mother took out her anthologies of poetry and sitting at the kitchen table we read the poems to each other. 

 My mother would make up poetry games--we would take turns picking a poem that we liked and reading it aloud and then explaining why we  picked the poem.  I often laugh  thinking of  how her little games  shaped me as a future  English professor--what better way?

 My mother loved Yeats and Houseman and  knew many of their poems by heart. And so do I.
Here is one of her favorites  by Yeats ,  
WHEN YOU ARE OLD

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Here is one that she often recited aloud   from

THE SHROPSHIRE LAD  by A.E.Houseman

WITH RUE MY HEART IS LADEN

WITH rue my heart is laden

  For golden friends I had,

For many a rose-lipt maiden

  And many a lightfoot lad.

 
By brooks too broad for leaping
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  The lightfoot boys are laid;

The rose-lipt girls are sleeping

  In fields where roses fade.