Purpose

[QDeathstar]

Purpose

I write because I know
monkeys who write
enough...


...will eventually create a real masterpiece.

[Leanne]

But at that point, they'll cease to be monkeys and become critics forevermore.

[justcloudy]

Where are the rooms of chimps going at it on typewriters? There should be some of those, somewhere. Maybe in a defunct nuclear bunker or something.

[QDeathstar]

Don't tell me i got chimps and monkeys confused. I really dont want to go down that road again.

[Leanne]

Call 'em chunkeys. Problem solved.

[Quixilated]

Monkeys have tails. Apes do not. I think reason we are all so confused is because Curious George has no tail, but the Man With the Yellow Hat calls him a "good little monkey" all the time.

Don't think the distinction matters for the poem, the moral works just fine with monkeys I thought. Writers write. Write enough words and pages and surely the odds will grant you something to make it all worth your time. At least that's how I read it, and that's what I have always hoped is true.

This one has quite a lovely balance of humor and gravity. I disagree with the infinite monkey theorem as it applies to monkeys. But I agree with the poem as it applies to people who choose to never give up trying to accomplish something. Anyway, good read, thanks P.

[billy]

monkeys are a pop band chimps buy their records.

wasn't too keen on the follow up line:

...will eventually create a real masterpeice. if the quote has been heard,

without it i freely think of the shakespeare quote, with it i feel sort of cheated, also, is there a fake masterpeice? and if there were, would it be spelled masterpeice or masterpiece"

[QDeathstar]

ah, I see. I before e except after c, or in this case before c too. Wobbly spelling strikes again.

---

as to whether or not there are fake masterpieces, of course there are.

[RiverNotch]

Even forgeries of masterpieces are themselves masterpieces ----- masterpieces of forgery, that is. But really, isn't masterpiece a term that is wholly, even in the eyes of some Great Structuralist Critic, dependent on context? What was Louise Gluck's masterpiece when she wrote The House on Marshland was surely not what was her masterpiece when she wrote The Wild Iris, then eventually Faithful and Virtuous Night (which if anyone has a digital copy.....) ----- and even when an artist is dead, there are masterpieces of that artist in relation to his nation, to his craft, even to himself, which with enough bullshit (and really, will there ever be too little?) becomes valid........ That is to say, at least for me, even "What is Art" is less fluid than "What is a Masterpiece".

But back to the poem: I read it a bunch of times, and only on the last few did I catch the last line. I think it's more insightful (or perhaps just more ambiguous; but surely, funnier) without it.