When you're a student of poetry, you're lucky if you don't realize how untalented you are until you get a little better. Otherwise, you would just stop.
Interpretation
Self-awareness can hinder progress; sometimes ignorance can fuel persistence.
This quote by Tony Hoagland reflects on the learning journey in poetry and the creative arts. It suggests that students may initially lack an awareness of their own limitations, which allows them to pursue their craft with enthusiasm and determination. As they improve, they might become more aware of their shortcomings, which could discourage them from continuing. The message highlights the importance of perspective in the learning process—sometimes, a lack of realization about one's talent or skills can be a blessing that motivates continued effort and exploration.
In practice
In a workshop on artistic development, discussing the importance of persistence despite self-doubt.
So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million miles from here.' A good poetic voice can do both at once.
What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle. What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel. What I thought was an injustice turned out to be a color of the sky.
Research confirms that great teachers change lives. Students with one highly effective elementary school teacher are more likely to go to college, less likely to become pregnant as teens, and earn tens of thousands more over their lifetimes.
It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days.
I'm a very introverted person. Nothing that's happened has changed that, but one of the reasons I write for teens is it's a real privilege to have a seat at the table in the lives of young people when they're figuring out what matters to them.
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
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