chaotic reader

This means that I am more of a chaotic reader who often avoids the responsibilities of ownership in favor of library books, as if reading books that do not belong to me grants me some additional measure of freedom (libraries—the only arena where the socialist project has succeeded).
[...]
There's nothing terribly wrong with reading "only" poetry—but there's still a shadow of premature professionalization hanging over this practice. A shadow of shallowness.

—Adam Zagajewski, “Young Poets, Please Read Everything,” A Defense of Ardor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005)

worse before it gets better

You could make this poem better by making it worse.

show 'em hell

After their first portfolios were turned in, the creative writing teacher thought one of the students must have misheard the admonishment “Show, don’t tell,” as “Show ‘em hell.”

aide-memoire

Forty years later Jonathan Swift wrote, in his Advice to a Young Poet, that ‘a commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without’, for ‘poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories’.

—Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (Biblioasis, 2024)

a teacher's limits

Even with Rilke as a mentor, and with the benefit of his stirring advice, Kappus didn’t make it as a poet or artist.

hand-me-downs

Writers who teach writing by repackaging advice received from their teachers.

[After reading another craft book chockful common advice essays. Plus prompts!]

suspect subject

Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it, a wise man once told me.

―Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing (Norton, 1979)

hard thing

Those of you who are real artists know well enough all the special advice I can give you, and in how few words it may be said—follow nature, study antiquity, make your own art, and do not steal it, grudge no expense of trouble, patience, or courage, in the striving to accomplish the hard thing you have set yourselves to do.

—William Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art (1883)