I was cleaning out files (because as “Hoarders” tells me, 80% of filed documents are never touched again) and found these two poems. They seemed relevant to our little group. ❤
I Write
by Naomi McEneely
Originally published in Yankee Magazine, January 2000
I write with renegade fat first-grade pencils
While the laundry waits.
Catching the words from my mind before they are
Folded away.
~
I write with remnants of red crayon
Rescued from the broom
As the dustpan beckons.
~
I write with pointless pencils
To keep sharp words
From cutting me inside.
~
I write on scraps
Recycled from third-grade
Homework to write words
Recycled in my mind.
~
I write to remember
Who I am and to
Record who I am becoming.
________________________________________________
For the young who want to
By Marge Piercy
Talent is what they say
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.
Perhapsody 
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