Excerpt from Local and National Poets of America: With Interesting, Biographical Sketches and Choice Selections From Over One Thousand Living American Poets; The Only Complete Biographical Dictionary of Local and National Poets of America, Containing Numerous Selections As one of the fine arts, Poetry has not received the encourage ment and appreciation in America that is deservedly due to such an important and beautiful branch of literature an art that has indis putably played a significant part as one of the factors in shaping the destiny of so great a nation. N 0 one, says George Parsons Lathrop, is so bold as to affirm that, as a nation, we are poetic. With Germans 'poetry is a part of daily life: it lives not only on their lips but in their hearts as well. Ot so with us. Our appreciation of it is generally too theoretical, conventional, perfunctory, and involves a trice of apology for being interested in anything so unpractical. One thing is cer. Tain. Whatever the American people think of poetry and as to this they themselves still appear to be quite vague - it is perfectly clear that they do not think enough about it. If they did, they would know good poetry when they saw it; they would sometimes honor the chief makers thereof, wisely and soberly; they would cause the art and the percep tion of genuine poetry to be as carefully studied in every school and college as arithmetic and drawing and modeling now generally are stud ied. They would sustain literature in a generous Spirit, make poetry a vital factor in the family and national life; and give to the accredited poet a distinguished place in the social and political Order. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.