What the Olympics Can Teach Poets About Writing

Poets need so much more  in their lives besides a "room of one's own" and enough money to live.

Poets need to cultivate a resilient spirit as well as patience, fortitude and persistence.  These attributes are essential to the creative experience--both process and product.

This July take a lesson from the athletes competing in London.  When the camera zooms in  any one of the thousands of athletes participating in the games, take note.

Look in the  Olympian 's face as she or he is preparing to meet, in the one upcoming moment, the culmination of  countless hours of practice, pain, hope, exhilaration, criticism, failure, success, resolve and self-correction. You will see, as I do--regardless of the sport or the year in which the Olympics take place-- countless examples of people who do not give up on themselves, on their sport, on the audience which supports the sport and--if some of the "behind -the- scenes stories" can be believed --the often unseemly and sometimes unfair politics of their sport.

These men and women have come to participate. And they will do everything in their power to make sure that no one and no thing will stop them from doing so.

How many poets can say the same thing of their involvement with poetry? How many poets can honestly say that that participating in the life of poetry is a thing unto itself--precious, necessary and filled with an undefinable grace which makes all their efforts worthwhile and noble?