poetaster

Heti’s detractors could probably put a bottle in the middle of a table and entertain themselves reading lines out of context in suave, poetaster voices.

Key is captured in a heroic pose: enthroned on a big chair with pen in hand, looking every inch the sort of poetaster who would come up with lines like “O’er the ramparts we watched / Were so gallantly streaming.”

And he did have more lives, many; he once listed some of them: “I am a Schoolmaster — a Private Tutor, a Surveyor — a Gardener, a Farmer — a Painter, I mean a House Painter, a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day-Laborer, a Pencil-Maker, a Writer, and sometimes a Poetaster.”

In 2018, can Brancusi still release our inner poetaster?

When the successful lawyer and amateur poetaster Francis Scott Key wrote the words to the anthem, he was an appointed negotiator for political prisoners in the War of 1812.