You have to like it better than being loved

I recently began reading So You Want to Write, by Marge Piercy and Ira Wood, because I am seriously considering taking a writing workshop with them at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY based on this book.

The book began with this poem, and I was immediately sold. I wanted to share it, and I looked online and didn't find it, was all set to type it up myself. But then I perused her web site, and lo and behold it was the one poem from the book The Moon is Always Female that was posted there.

I should also note that she has a memoir called Sleeping With Cats. I find it unfortunate that that title is taken.


For the young who want to

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.


Copyright 1980, Middlemarsh, Inc.
from THE MOON IS ALWAYS FEMALE
Alfred A. Knopf, New York