I often muse on the subject of angry, violent children and blame the producers of movies, TV and writings on those very subjects; thus poisoning the next batch of developing brains. Editor Loane's selections here indicate that it has ever been thus: humans are a vicious aberration of Mother Nature's natural selection process, they kill for the glamour of it and extol the fighting process. I guess there's no hope for us.
It wasn't until I got to the poems of Cowper and Goldsmith that writers of the time chose other subjects to write about. Of the skills of the poets, I continue to be unimpressed. My own schooling was apparently deficient. I still believe that if there's a story to tell, tell it without all the flowers and non-sequiturs. For me raw truth is more powerful. ( )