Ric wrote --- "Being spontaneous takes a good deal of time, study and effort." True enough. One's poetry gift little doubt steeped in much scholarship and absent of medieval spells of flattery. But self-imposed objectivity and discipline. Quite naturally amateurism abounds on the net and elsewhere. Everyone can be published now. Indeed, they can even have their own magazine. (One suspects that often as not much of the stuff published on the net isn't even being read by publishers. Just published. And how's that for false praise.) Need voices such as yours and others on this list which would set by example standards of literary merit. But consider that many of those attempting to write poetry are not so much writing poetry, but merely making record of their inner spiritual life, personal problems, love affairs, grief, self-absorbed rumors of the skull. Though all the while improving communication skills. So the limited exposure to the creative process, based on simple needs to practice writing/reading, meets some criteria of education. Their lives not literary in the least. But yet nourished somehow by reading and meeting others who are caught, enthralled in the same illusory promise that writing may yield some answer. Not privy to them elsewhere. A flash of lightning leap up from the page and singe their noses. (I'm still waiting for this flash. Has anyone seen it lately?) When one makes one's private thoughts public the effect may prove medicinal, cathartic. Or at least for some be a remedy as confession is good for the soul. Ernest Slyman HomePage www.geocities.com/soho/7514 email: [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%