Anthony Madrid

from Statement. Poetry Society of America

APHORISM: Poets all write what they want, but they don't all write what they want to read.

Now, what would happen if we started teaching people to write what they actually want to read? That's easy. We'd all be ankle-deep in a bog of inert and unoriginal gunk—which is to say: things would be mainly like they are now, the key difference being that the level of pretense would be lower. And would that really be any better?

Yes. Because, the way we do things now, most poets please nobody, not even themselves—whereas, if everyone were taught to write what they themselves wanted to read, then quite a few people, hidden away and operating in harmless isolation, would be getting off on poetry, every day.

In a few exceptional cases—ones similar to my own—a poet would generate masses of immature and irresponsible lyrics, honestly seeking to please nobody but herself, and every last one of those lyrics would be truly delightful to its maker and useless to everyone else except for a few perverts, and the lyrics would find their way to those perverts, and some measure of inoffensive success might be achieved.

At any rate, this is what I intend to teach my students, next time I have any. Do the legwork, find out what you like to read. If what you really like to read is a bunch of descriptions of wieners and kwungamungas, write that. Be as deep as you are—or as shallow. Write about bees. Think hard about Dickinson, her integrity.