When I was eight years old I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going there was no reason to quit.
Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.
It's true you can never eat a pet you name. And anyway it would be like a ventriloquist eating his dummy.