Mr. Billy Collins got one thing right: the trouble 
with poetry is that it leads to more poetry. Let's say 
you're nineteen, in college, changing the subject 
whenever Mom or Dad asks what the hell you expect
to "do" with your English major. Fact is, you think
you could be a poet, at least if you sat down
and worked at it a little harder, because you're in
this creative writing workshop, and here's the story.
 
You used get wasted the night before your poem draft
was due, listen to weird jazz with your art major friend,
Juke, then one night at three a.m. you have a blissed-out 
epiphany about the shape of the posters on your wall 
being exactly the same as the shape of the door and 
of the dorm room windows, and —bam—you whip out 
on your laptop a barely more than half-page rendering 
of this insight, with a few concrete images and metaphors 
as assigned, print it out, giggle with Juke over it,
then move on to other topics, or, truth be told, the one 
and only insistent Topic, which is girls, more specifically 
Amanda, your recently-ex love and soulmate. Oh all her 
annoying charms and beautiful bad habits, one of which 
habits was you, for about eight months, and you 
miss her so much in that punched-in-the-gut way,
that you can't help but spout blossoming nonsense
worse even than your lame-ass poem. Then you crash.
 
And here's what all this has to do with Poetry.
Next day you troop into the workshop circle,
or same day, actually, and you're still more than 
groggy with the pot and wine, but there you are,
Mr. Perfect Attendance bearing your dismal little 
epiphany because honestly it turns out you like
this class despite the nagging nitpicky professor. So
there’s your lyric all printed out in 19 copies, though 
you're hungover enough to be clear about how crappy 
your crap truly is, especially when you get a load of 
the new five-page dream narrative turned in by 
Becca Hayes, who must just really live in Metaphoria.
 
She's so damn good, her lines slithering like anacondas 
of dirty ice and lonesome fire and all kinds of stuff 
you'd never in a million years come up with, so 
for a few shiny minutes you are utterly swallowed
by the beautiful Becca-mind, and at the same time
(you're nineteen years old, after all), more than a little
itchy and bothered by the equally gorgeous Becca-bod,
her little eyebrow moves and leg crossings as fascinating
and epiphanal as your dumbfuck stoner blurt is totally 
and eternally putrid and trivial—and, sure enough, 
Professor Middleman slaps yours on top of the stack, 
no doubt to underline your glaring phony ineptitude
and spasmy dull fish-out-of-waterness, when—
 
Suddenly he launches into an edgy lecture on not 
taking ourselves too seriously, people, just say whatever 
the hell you need to say and then get off the damn page. 
Stop wasting everyone's precious lifetime, OK? You're 
sharp enough to realize your lifeless poem is not 
so much being praised as used, in this way, as an 
un-bad example. Weak in many ways, sure, but at least 
it's not some oh-so-precious or message-mongering 
adolescent blather going on for page after self-indulgent 
page, and whew! this guy sure can work up a head of steam
when he wants to, the asshole, but by now you're riding
the wave, issuing your coolest tiny noncommittal smile
to the room, but mostly Becca-ward, as if to say, shucks,
Doc, you are even fuller of it than I am. And you’re 
pretty sure Becca gets it, delivering her own tiny smile 
as her poem titled “Untitled (gypsy dream)” gets flamed 
and sliced by that bald uptight bully-with-a-briefcase. . . .
 
But even he, buttwipe that he is, plays his role in the great 
turning circle of your life, for the beauteous thing, 
the most golden development occurs at break time 
by the soda machine down the hall, when Becca gets 
by your side to chat you up, and you stage-whisper what 
a jerk that prof is. Did his latest submission come back 
today from that bigname mag he’s always name-dropping
he was in years ago? Naw, she says, probably the wife 
just pulled a Lysistrata on him. . . . And soon that sad 
spectre vanishes from both your heads, because she really 
likes your poem, she should learn to whittle things 
down more, but no, you say, she's so much better than you, 
you wish you could think like that, and before you know it, 
you've got yourself a date for the open-mic Friday night.
 
Who cares who says what in the second half of class?
You are abruptly and intently a poet now, you love it all, 
and you've just got to read this Lorca that Becca was 
raving about, so you do, and in fact Lorca turns out 
to be every bit as terrific as the awesome Becca says he is, 
and you maybe become her boyfriend for a year, or 
six months, or maybe just poetry pals. It actually doesn't 
matter by then. You've been bitten but good by the bug, 
Lorca today, Rilke tomorrow, Dickinson next month, every 
damn book you power through from now on makes you 
want to write one of your own, and you do and do and do.