“W. H. Auden was once asked what advice he would give to a young man who wished to become a poet. Auden replied that he would ask the young man why he wanted to write poetry. If the answer was ‘because I have something important to say,’ Auden would conclude that there was no hope for the young man as a poet. If on the other hand the answer was something like ‘because I like to hang around words and overhear them talking to one another,’ then that young man was at least interested in a fundamental part of the poetic process and and there was hope for him.”
John Ciardi in How Does a Poem Mean? (Houghton Mifflin, 1959). Part Three of An Introduction to Literature by Herbert Barrows, Hubert Heffner, John Ciardi and Wallace Douglas.
Comment by Janice Harayda:
Auden is right that loving the process matters is paramount. Writers so often tell interviewers that they “hate to write” that the phrase has become a cliché. A love of the process is the only thing that sustains many — maybe most — writers through rejection, poverty, bad reviews and other disappointments.
(c) 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
