Yes, I agree Littlehawk. Some of the most incredibly bad horseshit I have produced, which is saying something. I actually got a tear in my eye while writing it, but it may have been pain rather than sentiment.

I have to admit a certain susceptibility to that kind of sentimental garbage. I can read a scene like that, or sit through Nell's death scene in A Christmas Carol for example, knowing full well that it is an obvious contrived effort to pluck my heartstrings, and still tear up like an idiot. I have developed an immunity to bad sentimental poetry though, as well as music. I think it's the ridiculous rhymes that the poets are forced to use that break the spell. I mean the poems by people like Edward Arlington Robinson, or the kind you see in the local newspaper that some housewife or plumber was moved to compose.

He was just 16 and way too young
To die in an awful wreck
But he did not see the curve ahead
so he crashed and broke his neck
And we were all sad when we heard the news
It struck a terrible chord
Until we realized he was heaven bound
And now lives with the Lord