full of bluster

Young poets have to be full of bluster about what they are doing; otherwise they’d have no confidence to keep writing.

—Charles Simic "The Great Poets’ Brawl of ’68," New York Review of Books, April 23, 2014

glories of analog

Makes me sad to think of the young poets who do all their writing on their phones. They will never know the notebook in all its analog glory.

poetical failure

The most common failure of beginning poets is that they think poetry should be poetical.

ars longa

Always there are writers who won’t survive their discovery phase.

my roller coaster

ROLLER COASTER

For half a century
Poetry was the paradise
Of the solemn fool.
Until I came along
And built my roller coaster.

Go up, if you feel like it.
It's not my fault if you come down
Bleeding from your nose and mouth.


by Nicanor Parra, Poems and Antipoems (New Directions, 1966), translated by Miller Williams

[I changed this post because I realized in 2016 I'd posted the same poem, "Young Poets." Not that a good poem, one I've memorized since my youth, shouldn't be posted twice or thrice or a trillion times, but I'm trying not repeat myself. Parra, for me, is one of the unique poets.]

improve the blank page

Young Poets

Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.

In poetry everything is permitted.

With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.

—Nicanor Parra, Poems and Antipoems (New Directions, 1966), trans. by Miller Williams.

shortcut life

In literature, dying young seems to be a shortcut to fame. But I wouldn’t recommend it as a career path.

born blind

A young poet often can’t see clichés: One must be well-read to recognize well-worn words.

gray crowd

If MFA programs are attracting so many eager young poets, why is it that the audience at so many poetry readings is filled with graying elders?