The trouble with comparing a poet with a radio is that radios
don't develop scar-tissue. The tubes burn out, or with a
transistor, which most souls are, the battery or diagram
burns out replacable or not replacable, but not like that
punchdrunk fighter in a bar. The poet

Takes too many messages. The right to the ear that floored him
in New Jersey. The right to say that he stood six rounds with
a champion.

Then they sell beer or go on sporting commissions, or, if the
scar tissue is too heavy, demonstrate in a bar where the
invisible champions might not have hit him. Too many of
them.

The poet is a radio. The poet is a liar. The poet is a
counterpunching radio.

And those messages (God would not damn them) do not even
know they are champions.

- Jack Spicer, "Sporting Life"
copyright © 1975 by the Estate of Jack Spicer
from The Collected Books of Jack Spicer