Letters to a Young Poet and Blackswangreen are great pieces of literature. Both of these stories are

about poets that seek advice. The stories Blackswangreen and Letters to a Young poet both have a common

central idea, which is beauty in a poem and how truth makes true poems. These stories encourage the poets to

write about their lives, and not about generic love. These stories have this central idea and this is why.

Letters to a Young poet is a letter submitted to Rainer Maria Rilke by a poet. Rilke states that the young

poet should write about himself "Dig into yourself for a deep answer" (page 6). Rilke says to not write love

poems because there too generic "Don't write love poems; avoid those …show more content…
He thinks that the poet's life and and feelings should be present in the poem "So rescue yourself from

these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you" (page 6), because Rilke believes that

truth is a poem's beauty.

In the chapter "Hangman" (from Blackswangreen) Jason (the main character) has a problem, which is

his stammer. Jason does not like to stammer, because he fears that he will be judged "Listening, watching,

thinking whats wrong with Jason Tailor" (page 2). He hated the fact that he could express himself verbally "I

hated myself for not being able to say a simple word in my own language, I couldn't even say a simple word in

my own language, I couldn't say 'nightingale'" (page 2). His stammer was so terrible, he needed to see a "Speech

therapist at Malvern Link Clinic" (page 2). In the chapter Solarium, Jason meets Madame Crommelynck under

then name Eliot Bolivar (which is Jason's pseudonym) " For the attention of Elliot Bolivar... it invited me in" (page

142); he uses Eliot Bolivar as a psedonym because he wants to be known as a 'barbarian' as Madame

Crommelynck states "you wish to become a barbarian" (page 152), and he is trying to keep his poetry a secret