1
Give yourself time. Give yourself time
to create terrible poems. Give yourself
a litinay of lines. Take all the chances.
2
If it helps, replay memories.
3
Write it all down.
Write now. Write now. Write then.
4
Listen with the doors open while in.
Listen with the windows down
while out, while about.
Listen in public. Listen by day.
Listen for the night.
Listen to how you wax and want.
Listen at risk of sunburn.
Just listen.
5
Never try this one thing: to be too clever.
Know never to follow
all the advice anyone gives you.
6
Read a lot and read widely.
Know your library. Learn how clever
you have been all this time.
7
On post and paper, a poet
is one thing. At the mic and on screen,
you are another.
You don’t need to be great at both,
but know which platform suits you better.
Then rotate your crops: try the other
format again this time next year.
8
Remember good artists steal, but don’t
turn into a snake or a myna bird.
Create magic potions that restore
rather than poison.
9
Hunt all five senses and trust your sixth
— track concrete details like a bear– please
leave abstracts to hibernate awhile longer.
Love and her cubs (grief, anger, and jealousy)
aren’t migrating anywhere.
10
Note the moon. Write a hundred poems
about her, and a hundred others about
something else that holds your gravity.
Honor all you’ve written, but be ready,
stay open — only a few dozen or less
of those first couple hundred will be ones
anyone other than your dog
or your best friend will truly want to hear.
11
Get that through your system.
You will find your poet’s ear.
12
Educate yourself.
Educate yourself on flora and fauna.
13
Never assume you know it all.
14
Travel as far as anyone can take you.
Have one hobby for your passions,
one interest that others around you excel at,
and one or two past-times
you embrace as the seasons cycle.
15
Observations and language come from anywhere.
Learn to cook or make art or weave fashion.
Put it deep into your DNA.
Use that new excitement, the knowledge
and experience in your verse.
16
Break free in your writing from
the inner critic. Ride fast on the backs
of one hundred wild horses to get away.
Then take the A-train and keep moving.
If you get to a lake or an ocean
and that voice is still there, dive! Dive! Dive!
17
Every time you come up for air, write again.
It doesn’t matter how perfect it is,
how clean, how much it sounds like
the last successful piece, how much it comes
out the way you want it.
Just write it. Flow.
You can fish in it
for a fresh catch or
revise it from the remnants
after its rivers go dry.
18
Remember you will fail.
But anything worth doing
is never too easy (especially at first).
