Dear, Robert Southey

Dear,
Dr. Laureate Southey

I must say I came to you work with some difficulty. It was hard for me to first find a distributor who would sell your work, and secondly, once I found it it was basically one of those copies meant to preserve historically significant work. So, my reader probably knows nothing of you.

I found your Madoc poem and Joan of Arc suitable in name to create my own renditions of them. For a few months I thought I was subconsciously plagiarizing you; that some demonic force had implanted in my memory your poems, and I was rewriting them. Thus, I spent my twenty dollars---which was reimbursed for some reason---and bought your collected work.

I must say, I understand why you're Poet Laureate. Your work was on the cusp of the Novel's invention, and it had a refined style easily comprehended. Your verse, by modern standard, would seem superfluous, as like the Iliad and the Odyssey are translated today, your work might be better read as a novel rather than poetry. As your work is one of the first works which called the sky blue---it's hard to find a poet. or really, a writer prior to you who would have the audacity to call the sky blue. Most writers didn't describe anything, but rather their imagery was secondary to the concept being discussed. It's not like today's literature where the image is compulsory.

This gets to the strangest part of your work, that it's more novel like in its diction. Which, is likely why you became Poet Laureate because you innovated a style that is still in use today. Neither Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth or Coleridge's style are in use today, unless you count my pitiful attempts at poetry. 

Truthfully, Southey, you are Poet Laureate for a reason. While your work is hard to find, your style has become the standard for writing.

I am reading Thalaba the Destroyer right now, and I might say it's very relatable to my own feelings. I don't know if many people could or would read it today, and be able to extrapolate from it a sense of enjoyment. But, I do, as I, feel a lot like the Prophet in the work, forecasting doom on the world. I'm looking for that one bit of kindness toward the Camel, so to speak. 

The story is archetypal, and probably your chief work. As I'm thinking about it right now, and I just sense that there's a truth to it. That a prophet---should one exist in modern times---would exist in that manner. The fact that you knowingly synthesize Islam and Christianity confused Byron; yet I'm knowledgeable that some Eastern Orthodox Christians who speak Arabic still call Christ Allah. I'm even more knowledgeable, by the subtle innuendo, that it is the Christian religion you are speaking of.

And quite, the story is what it would be like if a prophet walked the earth in these current times. In diction not dissimilar to the Novels of a generation after you. I have to say, you deserve Poet Laureate.