I have something to say. I'm climbing up on my high horse to say it. I'm a little bit worried about that because I'm awful clumsy and uncoordinated. Here goes.

This is a blanket statement.

You can't write poetry if you don't read poetry.

I refuse to allow any exceptions to this. I will allow addendums. For instance: You must read all the poets you can. You must must must read Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. There is no understanding anybody writing today and yourself writing poetry if you don't read them. Yes. They're both bloody Americans. I sound ethnocentric you say? Well them's two your momma and poppa of contemporary poetry in English. Find me someone who knows of what they speak and says something different and I'll listen. After that you should read everybody. Even the ones you think are stupid. Like Sharon Olds. I read her. I don't like her but I read her all the time. Read them all and read them in their own little books. Not anthologies. Anthologies make poetry into gobbledygook. (Plus poets are poor and if you care about poetry you should buy their little expensive books.)

Addendum #2: Poems ain't got nothing to do with inspiration or with your hurt feelings.

#3. I said this one before. I'm a-saying it again (and again and again and...) Poems cannot be explained. They can't they can't they can't. You can talk about them so that you can talk yourself into getting something but poems are themselves. If you could explain them, say what the hell they mean, then they ain't poems.

Why I gotta teach this shit? The meaning shit? I don't believe it. I don't want to talk about it. I'm a whore up there in front of the classroom. I'm teaching shit I don't believe in because I need the goddamned money and I don't care to make every last one of those kids in that class know what I mean when I say you can't tell me what a poem means. I tried. They agreed with me. Because, they said, a poem can mean something different to everybody. La la la. That's so sweet and nice. It's also: bullshit.

They all want to show me their poems, you see. I can't take it. I want to put down the ground rules before I look at anything. I refuse to validate the black soul boyfriend left me you're the only one and now I'm destroyed shit that they all write. Give me back my Bartholomew Klakk writing about his grandma's yellow doilies and B.B. King smoking all his dope and stealing his bike. I can't take the rhyme-y angst anymore. Read more! Read! more! Don't bother me till you do.

Further addendum: it doesn't count if you look up all the stupid clich�d words and phrases you use in a thesaurus and then switch 'em out. Writing anything worthwhile has almost nothing to do with grammar or word choice. It's got everything to do with attitude. Stanley Kunitz could write something to break your heart using only the following five words: marsh, drive, luck, capture, touch. I bet that's true.

I'm sorry for this. I am. I'm a jerk today. Sad and blue and jerky. I will now disappear back into my little rabbit hole and hope nobody's listening to anything I say ever.