"Not men, not booksellers, not the gods themselves tolerate bad poets."

- Horace
1st c. A.D.

Ahem. I'm a bitch. I say this in advance so that there is no misunderstanding. There is now no need to re-state this in anyone's poor, unsuspecting guestbook. I am a reprehensible and cynical human being with no redeeming fuzzy pink pom- poms on my pencil. I wear black alot and dance with the devil in the pale moonlight. Even my breakfast is pretentiously cruel, I quote as many as six obscure sources before my morning cup of eye of newt.

So when I am presented with poeticdiary, an obviously well-meant and well-meaning piece of work, clearly sincere and open, which kindly does not even paste itself over with bumper-stickers claiming its own rights as a "poet" and "artist", which is earnest and sweet as a newborn tabby cat and twice as cuddly, I start to fume and seethe black ink like unto Ursula the Sea Witch. I exhale a stream of cancerous smoke into the screen and hiss: "Oh, but it's awful!"

And it is, it really is. Cliche doesn't begin to cover it. Most of the poems are in haiku format, and I must say, I haven't seen haiku like this since the 1st grade when we made them out of pinto beans and dried macaroni. They swim with sentimentality and kleenex-strewn images, burdened with the crayola tragedy and optimism of a Hallmark get-well-soon card. The verses are so banal I expect to click onto the next page and see "Roses are red, violets are blue..." I am sure that all the little hearts this diarist pencils in above her i's are just breaking into a thousand pieces, but when she comes home all dripping wet to tell us about it, everything comes out like a kid's coloring book--endearing but a mess. I look at that last sentence with chagrin--the same chagrin that causes a mother to smile uncertainly and put those very pictures on the refrigerator for all to see.

This diary was begun on November 12th of this year and containes well over one hundred poems. If nothing else the author is prolific. And to expect quality when the emphasis has been on the quantity of purged emotions is perhaps a tall order. But being the wicked witch that I am, I can't help but want something more than this repetition of the same cookie-cutter angst that covers the collective refrigerator of Diaryland. Nothing set this journal apart from any other, made me see an individual at the heart of the mewling poetry as separate from literally thousand of others available.

This diarist wishes to remain anonymous and I can say that she has acheived that goal most admirably. I have no idea who she is or what drives her, what honest passions fuel her marathon of entries--each might as well have come from a random sampling of greeting cards.

But please remember that, as quoth the immortal Dogberry, I am an ass. Don't forget a pretentious ass. I eat babies and hate golden retriever puppies and I most certainly have a vendetta against all gentle souls who write honestly and without artifice. Those who have no other wish but to pile as many pinto beans as possible into seventeen syllables.