poetry wednesday : for the young (and old) who want to

February 24, 2010 in Uncategorized

For the young who want to

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.

-Marge Piercy

[illustration by Anthony Russo]

About Patti Digh

Patti Digh is an author, speaker, and educator who builds learning communities and gets to the heart of difficult topics. Her work over the last three decades has focused on diversity, inclusion, social justice, and living and working mindfully. She has developed diversity strategies and educational programming for major nonprofit and corporate organizations and has been a featured speaker at many national and international conferences.

3 comments to " poetry wednesday : for the young (and old) who want to "


LauraSue

February 24, 2010 AT 2:51PM

As a knitter, I find her first verse insulting. Craft is every bit as important as art, and, I would argue, art sucks unless the craft is mastered first. When did we start dishonoring the crafts that are primarily women’s crafts? Oh yeah, we always have. But to find a craftswoman doing it–that’s just unacceptable. Marge, you can do better.

And yes, because of her knitting insult, I have, indeed, missed her entire point. Isn’t that was bias does? Turns us against everything else the biased/racist/sexist person has to say?

patti digh

February 24, 2010 AT 4:57PM

Thanks for your note. I took it differently so your perspective is interesting to me.

I understood each second half of those verses as the inflated, ridiculous rendering of what other people think, for example:”Before that friends keep asking when you are planning to go out and get a job” and “Earlier they accuse you of withdrawing, ask why you don’t have a baby,call you a bum.” I see those as parallel devices to the knitting comment in the first verse.

And yes, that’s exactly what bias does.

Kristin Summerlin

February 27, 2010 AT 2:44AM

I think the “tedious hobby like knitting” doesn’t reflect on knitting at all, but on those dullards who don’t understand knitting, craft or art ~ or that any of them have any merit besides the “make-work” of a hobby. I’m a jewelry artisan and often think about the differences between fine art and craft. I’m proud to call what I do a “craft.” Only sometimes do I veer into or even aspire to what I’d call fine art.