For the young who want to
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
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,
The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
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.
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
Copyright Credit: Marge Piercy, “For the young who want to” from Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982). First appeared in Mother Jones V, no. 4 (May 1980). Copyright © 1980, 1982 by Marge Piercy and Middlemarsh, Inc. Used by permission of the Wallace Literary Agency, Inc.
Source: Circles on the Water (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982)
kianamaiart
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
izzy806
