spleen

Things that are not important when you make a poem:

1. Fame.
2. Anonymity.
3. Praise.
4. Blame.
5. Success.
6. Failure.
7. Happiness.
8. Sadness.

Why these things are not important:

1. Being famous does not make you a good poet.
2. Being unknown does not make you a good poet.
3. Being praised as a poet does not make you a good poet.
4. Shouldering blame for a poem does not make you a good poet.
5. A "successful" poet is not necessarily a good poet.
6. A "failed" poet is not necessarily a bad poet.
7. Happiness does not necessarily make good poetry.
8. Sadness does not necessarily make good poetry.

Things that are important when you make a poem:

1. Your strangeness.
2. Your understanding of the language.
3. What you know.
4. What you can learn.
5. What you can share.
6. Your ability to consider.
7. Your ability to act.
8. Your ability to revise.

All of this comes from you. In a way, you are not very important — it doesn't matter if anyone remembers that this great poem is your poem, only that the great poems provides its voice to the larger dialogue. But in a different way, you are the most important person under the sun. East is east only in relation to you. Your understanding of things is what makes the poem — not Shakespeare's understanding, or some critic's understanding, or whatever. Not even your understanding of what it is to be poetic, because we're talking about poetry and not poeticness. Poetry has never been about you, but about the private moment in which you happen to reside. Anyone could be in that moment, and that's the point.

So: earn great accolades, publish everywhere, be wildly successful. Are the poems any good? Hide in a room, write them in secret, show them to no one. Are the poems any good? The question is always the same.

This entry was posted Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 4:16 am and is filed under poetry. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.