For the Young Who Want To in  General   

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.

By Marge Piercy

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Other poems by Marge Piercy:

• A Work Of Artifice
• Always Unsuitable
• Attack of the Squash People
• Barbie Doll
• Belly Good
• Colors Passing Through Us
• For the Young Who Want To
• Implications of One Plus One
• The Friend
• The Morning Half-Life Blues
• The Neighbor
• The Seven Of Pentacles
• The Woman in the Ordinary
• To Be of Use
• To the Pay Toilet
• Toad Dreams
• Traveling Dream
• Visiting a Dead Man on a Summer Day
• What Are Big Girls Made Of?
• Winter Promises
• You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop