Exhortations!

Every once in a while, the whole business of poetry starts to wear on me: the worry about publication, the worry about if it's worthwhile, the conflict between wanting to create and wanting to "matter" as a poet. But then I find a moment of exhortation like this one and all of that falls away leaving the desire to create, to speak of this world, as my essential desire.

Doubt not, O Poet, but persist. Say "It is in me, and shall out." Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of then that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson