1. Stop talking and listen. Listen to yourself listening. Then listen to that. <br /> <br />2. Pile all your hats in the back yard and burn them. Especially any with feathers. <br /> <br />3. Remove your name from everything you do. Anonymity purifies. Fame corrodes. <br /> <br />4. Drive out your own sound by inviting in others. <br /> <br />5. Stop breaking sentences into lines. Instead, breathe. The breaks find themselves. <br /> <br />6. Stop talking with other poets. One god per universe is the legal limit. <br /> <br />7. Stop reading poems. Read hands, read faces, read hearts. <br /> <br />8. Unless it feels like a gift, don't give it. <br /> <br />9. Leave poems in unexpected places. In umbrella stands, in robins' nests, on piles of buffalo manure. <br /> <br />10. Stop being a poet at all. Throw away the sash. Because it isn't about your being. It's about being, period. <br /> <br />11. Stop writing them down. Leave them unfolded on the doorsteps of the fearful - the only copies in the world. <br /> <br /> <br />(2006, for the good folks at Poemhunter.com)<br /><br />Mike Finley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/be-a-better-poet/
