We fuss & we bother about Poetry & Commerce. O the sorrows of the American Poet, the lost, the neglected... oooh....

It's been that way from the beginning. No one can explain how or why we happened upon the chewy verses of Edward Taylor, 250 years after he put them in his cupboard.

Art, nature's ape, hath many brave things done;
As the Pyramids, the Lake of Meris vast,
The pensile orchards built in Babylon,
Psammitch's labyrinth (art's cramping task),
Archimedes his engines made for war,
Rome's golden house, Titus his theater.

The clock of Strasbourg, Dresden's table sight,
Regsamount's fly of steel about that flew,
Turrian's wooden sparrows in a flight,
And th'artificial man Aquinas slew,
Mark Scaliota's lock and key and chain
Drawn by a flea, in our Queen Bettie's reign.

- from "Should I with Silver Tools Delve Through the Hill"