A long time ago I was fortunate to work with an excellent poet, James Hearst, who helped to plant my feet firmly on the path of my artistic quest in life. Especially appropriate were two lessons that he taught me:

1. One day while we were talking he told me that I should be patient. I had the drive, the desire to write poetry, but I would have to live much more to have enough to write about. He gently explained that I would probably be nearly fifty before I truly found my voice. He was right.

2. Once when I was pounding my head against the wall of prosody he told me a story of when he experienced the same frustrations. It seemed he had an older friend who was both a carpenter and a poet. When Jim told him of his problems, the man threw down his hammer, spit on the ground, and said, “Damn it, Jim, you don’t learn how to saw a damn board by reading it in some book! You learn it by sawing the damn board!”

How is this relevant to our poetry? Outside of the fact it allowed me to tell one of my favourite stories, it reminds us that in the end poetry comes down to hard work; those hours alone placing the scratches of our souls down on the enticing blank glare of the page to capture the ever moving instant now. It also reminds us that we should follow our hearts.

I believe that our poems are honest and the best that we can do, what else matters? All the rest is either "icing on the cake" or vanity.