"For We Are All Poets:
Whether We Know It Or Not"
written by Jeremy Osbern

On the daily update I posted on ThroughAGlass.com for March 21, 2006, I wrote the very eloquent rhyme, "Also featured there, will be the trailer for AIR..." Immediately upon completing the phrase, I realized appropriately that I was in actuality a poet, and did, in fact, not know it. Soon thereafter, I started to wonder about the origin of this phrase. I've heard it my entire life, but why is this phrase of all phrases programmed into our collective psyche and immediately called to memory after a rhyme is stated or written?

I decided to find out. So, naturally, I turned to the internet, and after hours - well okay, minutes - of searching, I discovered that this phrase has no documented history. "No pain, no gain" can be traced back to Nietsche, and most people don't know it, but the ever-popular saying "Make your heart like a lake, with calm, still surface, and great depths of kindness" was actually first coined by Lao Tzu.

So, in honor of this great quote, I offer up the following false history of "I'm a poet, and I didn't know it..."

The first documented use of the phrase, "I'm a poet and I didn't know it" was in 205 BCE by the Roman Philosopher Titus Maccius Plautus, after he said "In everything the middle course is best: trouble to men is brought by excess." Realizing that his words had formed an unintentional rhyme, the elated Titus Maccius Plautus exclaimed "ignarus poeta", which unfortunately did not rhyme, and despite being contrary to the popular tradition of oration, he wrote it down anyway.

The phrase was thought to be lost upon the ages, until it was rediscovered in a scroll in the ruins of a palace, and translated by an unknown Muslim linguist in 980 CE into the Greek language. The translation, understood to us as, "I am the poet. I was unaware of myself..." resulted in much debate throughout the Western world, and was eventually adopted as the philosophical mantra of the tyrannical King Richard II of England. King Richard II was known as a weak politician, primarily attributed to his odd wordings during important discussions. For instance, while negotiating the hand of Princess Isabella of Valois from her father Charles VI of France, Richard II is known to have said "Your daughter is very lovely, though her legs a bit stubbly." The King was much offended and war almost broke out between the two nations, but was soon resolved by a letter offered from one king to another, in which Richard II wrote "My offense is great to you, dear King, so I have sent these vocalists to you to perform." Richard II didn't always rhyme in written form. Charles the VI was delighted by this concession, and after a prompt and public execution of the English singers, he offered up his daughter as the next Queen of England.

Two hundred years later, the life of Richard II was famously revisited by the English bard William Shakespeare, and it was in this text, that the famous wordsmith himself is known to have first created the phrase in its modern form, as Shakespeare's Richard II recounts, "In this time of sorrow, I have sensed disdain upon the morrow. Hark! I am a poet, and I did not fore to this day, know it." The words were cut from the final draft of the play after the original actor playing the title role, who was able to remember things like:

"Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown;
Here cousin:
On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water:
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high."

... was unable to remember that particular line.

However, the line had made an impact on one actor, Blake Mellville, a young actor in the Chamberlain's Men, the group who first performed Richard II. By all accounts, Blake was the worst actor of the troop, but he had an uncanny ability to latch onto particular phrases in Shakespeare's work and use them ad infinitum to the annoyment of family and friends. Those who knew Blake couldn't count the number of times that he informed them that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" and whenever anyone would make an unintentional rhyme, he would inform them that they were indeed a poet, whether they knew it or not.

The phrase remained in the poorer classes of England for hundreds of years and first made its way over the Atlantic with Irish immigrants during the early part of the 20th century. The saying was first used in the media by the young Irish boy Danny O'Reilly on the hit game show Quiz Kids in response to host Joe Kelly's plug for the show's sponsor "Alka-Seltzer makes you feel right. Alka-Seltzer, have some tonight". The host latched onto the phrase and popularized it among American audiences. Since then, the phrase has been passed on from parents to children, from generation to generation.

At last after all these years, this phrase can be acknowledged for the rich history and sense of humanity contained somewhere inside all those syllables and black, little letters. Even if we don't always know the origins from which they stem, words have power within them. And, yes after that last sentence, I too am a poet, but I already knew that.

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