Unfulfilled Potential

Speaking of the physical costs of unfulfilled potential, the American poet, John Ciandi,

addressing a group of powerful, practical-minded businessmen, had this to say:

There is no poetry for the practical man. There is poetry for the mankind of the man who

spends a certain amount of his life turning the mechanical wheel. For if he spends too

much of his time at the mechanics of practicality he must become something less than a

man or be eaten up by the frustrations stored on his irrational personality...

An ulcer, gentlemen, is an unkissed imagination taking revenge for having been jilted. It is an unwritten poem, an undanced dance, an unpainted watercolour, it is a declaration from the mankind of the man that a clear spring of joy has not been tapped and that it must

break through muddily, on its own.”

The Challenge of Art to Psychology