Success Quote by Ben Hecht

A “raucous valentine” is Hecht in miniature: romance with a hangover, devotion delivered with a wisecrack and a bruise. The phrase yokes two incompatible registers. A valentine is tender, even corny; raucous is loud, unruly, a little drunk. Hecht signals that his tribute won’t be sanctified or “literary” in the museum sense. It will be affectionate, yes, but also noisy, streetwise, maybe profane - the kind of love letter you’d write if you learned lyricism in a newsroom and timing in a writers’ room.

“Poet’s dream and agony” tightens the screw. He’s not praising poetry as a genteel calling; he’s naming its double engine: aspiration and suffering, the ecstatic vision and the cost of having it. The subtext is a defense of the artist as both romantic and laborer, someone who turns private pain into public performance. By framing his work as “written,” Hecht foregrounds craft over inspiration: the dream may be airy, but the thing you can actually hand to readers is made.

Context matters: Hecht came up in Chicago journalism, then became a major screenwriter in Hollywood, a world suspicious of the “poet” but hungry for his gifts. The line reads like a self-portrait of a writer smuggling high emotion through low, populist form. He’s confessing tenderness while keeping his guard up, insisting that art can be both bouquet and bar fight - and that the honest tribute to a poet includes the blood on the petals.