FROG-SONG

I was going to post up another Port Brokeferry piece today. Then I got sidetracked and read a very long essay about teaching poetry to community college students in America, specifically teaching the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Then I read this from one of ED's poems and thought it chimed so wonderfully with how I feel and with the stuff on collaboration I posted below...

How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one’s name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog

It is not important to know who I am. It is important, only, that I am and that I write. I write to leave a mark, to say that I was here. But it is not important to know who I am, just that I was. When it comes down to it, who was Shakespeare? I don't need to know. I just need to read him and know that he was and his works are the mark he left behind him. All the rest is just frog-song.