A poet is somebody who is being, and who expresses his
or her being through words.

This may sound easy. It isn't.

A lot of people think or believe or know they are being -
but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not being. And
poetry is being - 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 be. Why?
Because whenever you think or believe or you know, you
are a lot of other people: but the moment you are being,
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 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 are all poets.

If at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting
and working and being, 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 be
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

                         A poet's advice, first published as a letter
                         to high school students at
                         Ottawa Hills High School - October 1955.

From an Enlightened Thinker's Quote Book copyright 1992
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