Ask a poet a question, get a flurry of questions in reply. At least, that’s what my mind did when I read this month’s question “How do you write poetry every day?” I came up with more questions, such as:

• How do you not write poetry every day?
• How do you write good poetry every day?
• How dare you write poetry every day?
• How does poetry write you every day?
• How do you be a poet every day?

That last question is one I am answering in my own life by living it. And the ways I have found to answer it involve addressing all the previous questions, fanciful though they first may seem.

So, let us begin with the original question, and its opposite. How do you write poetry every day? How do you not write poetry every day? The truth is, I veer somewhere between the two. I write poetry regularly. To me, regularly means often enough that I still feel like I am in the game, and long enough that it matters. Robert Hass is quoted as having said, “Take the time to write. You can do your life’s work in half an hour a day.” In fact, I take about 40 minutes.

And interestingly enough, 30 or 40 minutes seems to be a magical amount of time. It’s less than an hour, and therefore harder to resist. But it’s enough to get me going, to feel that I have put in a reasonable amount of time. If things aren’t flowing, I quit after 40 minutes. If not, I often run over. Short, regular bursts, with flexibility to follow the heat when it comes, have served me well.

Next question: How do you write good poetry every day (or at least regularly)? Well, good luck. Two of the faculty at my MFA program were colleagues of William Stafford, and raconteurs. I was fortunate to hear them tell of a time during some gathering or function when Stafford split off from the group at lunchtime, deciding to eat by himself and write some poems. The rest simply ate. Afterward, skeptically and conspiratorially, they quizzed Stafford on what he had written. He handed them half-a-dozen poems. “And,” said one faculty member to the other, eyes gleaming in amazement, “some of them were pretty good.”

It seems to me that poetry is a lot like photography. The secret to getting good photos, or poems, is to take a lot of shots. Though we might not all be as prolific as Stafford, I firmly believe that writing good poetry comes from reading, writing and revising poetry often. This, of course, takes time and energy — time some might say could be better spent elsewhere. Hence, the question: how dare you write poetry?

There are many things one can do with a life, and many needs in this world. Some see poetry as a dying art. Others favor a more tangible medium. But for me, poetry is very rightly done on a dare. It is a dare against reductionism in our relationship to language, and therefore our world. I dare to explore the complex and often contradictory states of human awareness through poetry because they are there, undeniably, in my art and in my life. That is not to say my art can justify any amount of neglect in my life. I believe in Flaubert’s credo: “Be steady and well-ordered in your life, that you may be fierce and original in your work.”

This is how poetry can begin to “write me” in my life. I work for a man named David Allen, who invented a simple but remarkable methodology for managing the mundane (and not-so-mundane) aspects of work and life. Even if he were to boot me out the door today with a footprint on my back, I cannot deny that his Getting Things Done^® methodology has transformed my art and life. One of the major tenets of his approach is to capture ideas, activities and projects into a trusted system.

For many years, I captured poetry ideas in my ubiquitous pocket notebook. It seemed as though there were moments in my day when poetry could peek through the morass of thoughts and feelings that go with daily life. Now, however, I capture everything else, and know that I will process it in due course. In this way, I have managed to shift my mindset from a swirl of to-dos in my head (think Pig Pen from the Peanuts series) with the occasional glimmer of poetic insight, to living more and more in the poetic mindset. Daily meditation also helps.

Nurturing this “head space,” first by deciding to be a poet every day (whether or not one writes every day), is by far the most important aspect of my relationship to art. Combined with the (flexible) discipline of writing regularly; realizing my job is to take many shots, not expect everything to be good; and continuing to dare against all odds to be true to what is uniquely mine to express — well, this is how I answer the ongoing question “How do you be a poet every day?”

It is a worthwhile pursuit. Living as a poet is a process that heightens my relationship to myself, to others and the world around me. I encourage you to find your own ways — not matter how often you write, or how good you think it is now — to be a poet, in whatever circumstances you find yourself, a little bit more each day.

Please send your poetry questions to advice (at) readwritepoem (dot) org and leave your thoughts about this question and answer session here, in the comments section.

Getting Things Done^® is a registered trademark of The David Allen Company.

Robert Peake studied poetry at U.C. Berkeley and in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing program at Pacific University, Ore. His poems have appeared in North American Review, Rattle and are forthcoming in Poetry International. Robert writes about poetry at robertpeake.com. (photo credit :: John J. Campbell)

In the time it took me to write, proofread and send this piece around to some trusted friends for feedback, I received three more rejections of my poetry, bringing my lifetime total up to 80. Fortunately, I am not the only one receiving these things. This month, multiple Read Write Poem members asked me if I would respond to the question, “What should you learn from rejection letters?”

I believe asking questions like this indicates a mindset necessary to sustaining a life steeped in art — a mindset seeking constantly to learn. Practically speaking, there are three components of a rejection letter worth considering if you want to learn from them: the fact of rejection, the source of the rejection and the contents of the letter.

The first part is tough to swallow: Your poems have been rejected. You suspected as much when you saw the thin SASE in your mailbox or politely titled subject line in your email inbox. There it is: rejection. A single data point, which does not indicate failure but certainly the lack of your hoped-for success.

But rejected by whom? The senior editor of a national magazine? An intern filtering fast-and-furious through the slush pile of a university press? An editor-friend who has written a candid page of feedback? Discern what you can about where the rejection came from, since as much as this stings, it may also tell you more about how far your piece went.

And finally, what was the nature of the rejection? Did you get a form slip, with nicely worded stock phrases? Or a personalized message complimenting specific aspects of your work and expressing sincere regrets at the editor’s obligation to clear backlog before taking new artistic risks? Some rejections can almost bolster your spirits as much as an acceptance. Almost. But all rejections can teach something.

That said, it can be tempting, and dangerous, to jump to conclusions based on thin information. The very fact of rejection is insufficient grounds to conclude your that poems are terrible, that you are a terrible poet, possibly a terrible person, and that giving up writing for good would be a service to humanity. And yet, despite numerous rejection letters, whenever I get a new one, a twinge of this defeatist thinking still flashes through my brain.

So, one important thing rejection letters teach you is — how to take rejection letters! Though that may sound glib and tautological, the truth is that rejection is a major part of writing poetry. So, learning to suppress the self-sabotage reflex is a requisite skill of the trade.

However, it can be equally tempting, in the name of self-preservation, to suppress useful feedback, and this is equally dangerous. You were rejected for a reason. It could be nothing more than a fatal combination of statistics and the subjectivity of taste. In fact, this is likely the case.

Nonetheless, I have found it useful, at minimum, to keep track of my acceptances as well as my rejections — not necessarily to save the slips, but to at least note the submission date, journal, poems, rejection date and any comments on a spreadsheet.

Taken over a long period of time, and with a boulder-sized crystal of salt, this can sometimes give me a feel for how well a particular poem is faring out there. But beyond the weird science of tracking results in aggregate — a process as fraught with pseudoscience and superstition as a fisherman chasing the perfect bait — is the sometimes-useful nature of the rejection itself.

I say “sometimes-useful” because first, it is incredibly rare, in my experience, to receive anything more than a form letter or standard slip; second, because what can seem like a personalized note of encouragement may be nothing more than a vague attempt to assuage the sub-editor’s conscience, keep you on as a subscriber, or both; and finally, because even earnest feedback is not always necessarily helpful.

Consider the publication. I will take this opportunity to say that if you do not both respect a journal and find its sensibilities sympatico to your own, you have no business sending your work there. None. If you do so, your first response to their rejection slip should not be surprise, but rather, as a writer friend-of-a-friend once quipped upon opening his mailbox, “Oh, look! It’s the rejection slip I sent off for.” Indeed, you did.

Assuming you sent poems to a journal you like and respect, it might be useful to see how far it went. I rarely save rejection letters. But I have filed away a personal note from a prominent editor who admired my work — not only because it soothed my ego, but because I intend to remind him, in the cover letter of next year’s submission, how much he said he liked my previous poems.

I also know a handful of editors whom I also consider friends. I do my best to maintain a healthy schizophrenia between our friendship and our writer-editor relationship. Still, they will often give candid remarks when they reject my poems, and this I take to heart.

The key, I think, in all of this, is knowing what to take to heart, and what to take on the chin. With regard to more detailed feedback, this is an opportunity to gain much-needed outside perspective on your work. Learning how a respected outsider has responded to your work can help you to think more like an outsider, refining your poems toward greater publishability.

That said, the submission process is not, and should not, be your primary mechanism for seeking detailed feedback. Workshops, mentors, and trusted poet-friends are all richer, and often more tactful sources of constructive criticism.

While none of the above indicates a hard-and-fast rule set for separating the nutritious elements of feedback from stock rejection chaff, it should at least give you some sense of how I have managed to navigate this uncomfortable but inevitable topic in my own career. In closing, I would like to answer a more philosophical variation of this question, which is: “What can you learn from rejection in general?”

In addition to rejection teaching you how to deal with rejection, it shows you what you are made of. I believe success in the arts often depends on longevity, that longevity depends on endurance, and that the only way to endure is to love the process. Rejection is part of the process.

So, above all, rejection has taught me perseverance in the discipline I love, kindness toward my sometimes-fragile writerly self, and that the only person who can declare my defeat in the poetry business is me. In the face of rejection, I simply refuse to call it quits — time and time again.

I suppose I could, like Emily Dickinson, lock up my poems in a hope chest, and still enjoy the writing process. But to me, poetry is a conversation — with myself, my forbearers, contemporaries and possibly future inheritors. Publication is the medium of that conversation, and with it, especially early on, comes rejection and more rejection. I won’t pretend to like it. But I can say with certainty that by embracing rejection as a teacher, I know that I have grown as a poet.

Wishing you all good writing, great success and a graceful relationship to rejection when it comes. Send future questions and comments to advice (at) readwritepoem (dot) org. And, please! Enough with rejection. I can only take so much.

Robert Peake studied poetry at U.C. Berkeley and in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing program at Pacific University, Ore. His poems have appeared in North American Review, Rattle and are forthcoming in Poetry International. Robert writes about poetry at robertpeake.com. (photo credit :: John J. Campbell)