writing worth a shit

[abu nuwas]

The people that can't write yet insist that they can can carry that belief to their death. It's always been that way. They aren't important to me, and telling them that they're wrong more than once is too much. There are more important things to do.

Would you give the same advice to a physicist engaged in designing a nuclear power-plant? It is axiomatic that everyone may do as they please, but you seem to suggest that no element of craft is necessary, in poetry.

Poetry may be notoriously difficult to define, and therefore to write a manual on its composition for, but it is a definite thing for all that, as you can tell by asking what it is not. It isn't a cam-shaft for example, and it isn't a peanut.