Explore "Ballade of the Average Reader" by Franklin P. Adams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I try to touch the public taste, / For thus I earn my daily bread. / I try to write what folks will paste / In scrap books after I am dead. / By Public Craving I am led. / (I' sooth, a most despotic leader) / Yet, though I write for Tom and Ned, / I've never seen an average reader.
The Editor is good and chaste, / But says: (Above the public's head; / This is _too_ good; 'twill go to waste. / Write something commonplacer -- / Ed.) / Write for the average reader, fed / By pre-digested near-food's feeder, / But though my high ideals have fled, / I've never _seen_ an average reader.
How many lines have been erased! / How many fancies have been shed! / How many failures might be traced / To this -- this average-reader dread! / I've seen an average single bed; / I've seen an average garden-weeder; / I've seen an average cotton thread -- / I've _never_ seen an average _reader_.
L'ENVOI
Most read of readers, if you've read / The works of any old succeeder, / You know that he, too, must have said: / "I've never seen an Average Reader. "