"It is certainly an irrational thing to do if you want either of the usual rewards of fame and riches…Nowadays, it's about as rational as saying, 'what do you do for a living' 'Well, I'm a kite-flyer.' I mean, there's not a great demand for kite-flyers around." -George Garrett

I once asked a classroom of sixth graders to draw a picture of a poet. Virtually all of them came up with some amalgamation of Walt Whitman and W.B. Yeats—an old white man with a bushy beard, a road cap. A few students drew slim figures wearing all black....