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.
The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
An unsatisfied appetite for knowledge means progress and is the state of a normal mind.
Some plague the people with too long sermons; for the faculty of listening is a tender thing, and soon becomes weary and satiated.
You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analagous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.
To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.
Obviously, I want my kids to be happy, and I believe that they can be super successful at whatever they want to do, but don't make the successful part more important than the process of doing it. Especially if it's an artistic endeavor.
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