Selections from the Complete Rhyming Dictionary

... and Poet's Craft Book, Edited by Clement Wood, c. 1936

The desire to write poetry, or at least acceptable verse is almost universal. The achievement of this desire may be gained by anyone, without excessive effort.

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Poetry is the expression of thoughts which awake the higher and nobler emotions or their opposites, in words arranged according to some accepted convention.

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Insofar as the conventions of poetry were artificial and unnatural, poetry tended constantly to rigidify and petrify. It became artificial and unnatural,
whereas prose continued...

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Poets, bound by fossilized conventions, have become a tepid social group...

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The fulfillment of desire causes others to spring hydra-like from its invisible corpse.

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In all cases the danger is rather in the overuse of the intellect, than in the use of inspiration.