Bloom

I just made my first poetry submission to Poetry magazine. This quote popped up after I made the submission:

"If you are interested in writing well, in working at being a better poet, then the most important piece of advice that anyone can give you is that you have to read recent poetry."

-Wendy Cope


I wish Emerson would put this to practice. No offense, Yeats. (Or Eliot, Pound, Plath, Stevens...)

That quote is keeping in line with a 2005 article I just read on the Poetry Foundation's website called "No Experience Necessary," by Christina Pugh (a 2000 Emerson grad and awesome poet). One of my biggest obstacles as a poet is recognizing/accepting/believing that I am a poet. I never feel like a poet. I don't look like a poet. I don't talk/read/act like a poet. I often feel like I don't have the experience to be one, and with my life revolving around work and classes that I don't give a shit about (i.e, Teaching College Composition), I also often feel like I'm not living the right kind of life with the right kind of focus that will get me any of the said experience I need to be a poet. But what I got from Pugh's article is that maybe all I need to do is keep on reading, keep on writing, and the rest of my life doesn't really matter. There's no right or wrong way to be a poet.

(Unless the "wrong way" is being self-deprecating, but isn't that also the "right way?")