Learning from Flaws
J. Quinn Brisben
A pure perfection cannot teach, it takes
Some clumsy journeyman to show us how
To breathe a life in things so we can show
Good ways to break the form and cook the cakes
Of art, astonish tastes: the sound which makes
The mind start up and blows the straining prow
Through waves resisting thought, so let us now
Praise famous clods who made mind-forming quakes:
Our Steinbeck, Lawrence, Wright, O’Neill, Celine,
And Sandburg, Faulkner, Lindsay, Dreiser, Crane,
Brash country boys who never met the queen,
Matriculated in saloons, the bane
Of canons, coarse, unwashed, and green
In thought who broadened language with crude pain.
