I discovered this Marge Piercy poem on a friend’s facebook page. I agree. There’s nothing inherently wrong with workshopping, of course; honest feedback from one’s peers is always the best thing for any creative type. But in a classroom setting it can be stifling, particularly if you get a bad instructor in the mix.
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.
The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms
is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
I go through phases of pinpoint focus: art then poetry, sculpture then poetry, illustration then poetry. I tend to make art when I’m happy, and make poems when I’m not: my biggest periods of art were immediately post-St. Paul’s ASP, when I was freshly out from under the thumb of my bully; my junior year of college, when I was living in Ireland; and from the moment I met my boyfriend (at a burlesque life-drawing class: the idea being that drawing pretty girls in pretty costumes is pleasanter than the traditional life-drawing subjects: ugly people naked) up until now. Right now I like being loved better than poems, and I’m loving making art.
I’ve been revisiting my poems lately, though it feels a bit like googling an ex or an old crush. I keep opening the InDesign file that’s the galleys of my never-printed chapbook, rereading, thinking, wow. This is good. I’ve won awards for these, won slam titles with these. Why didn’t I ever do anything with these poems, these years of my life? I may soon still. But this isn’t the place for it.
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