My Art is Not A Joke

The truth hurts, but it cannot also set you free. Being a poet, an artist, writer, musician or whatever can sometimes be a lonely thing. Even when you think you have made a fantastic insight somehow it always gets lost in translation to others. Take this quote from Max Eastman for example:

"A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke."

-Max Eastman (1883 - 1969, American writer and poet)

So it's lonely in the sense that you are on a kind of personal journey of expression that other people may or may not get. And maybe you don't want people to get it, or they misrepresent your ideas, they use you etc. If you do share your work you also open yourself up to a plethora of criticism, misunderstanding, alienation, disappointment. But of course you have to share your work, that's not only necessary but essential. That's what I think Eastman is getting at with the quote, that part of the creative process definitely involves having to work past criticism from others, which will undoubtedly happen in the life of the true poet.