A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling
through words. This may sound easy. It isn't.
A lot of people think or believe or know they feel-but
that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling-not
knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but
not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think
or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you
feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its
best, night and day, to make you everybody else-means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means
working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly
imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody
else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time-and whenever we do
it, we're not poets.
If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of
fighting and working and feeling, you find you've written one line of one poem,
you'll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become
poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world-unless
you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
Does this sound dismal? It isn't.
It's the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel.
e.e. cummings
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