Hooked

[rowens]

I think all this trying to find an audience, or wishing you could get a refund after reading a book of poems, is counter-productive. Whether a joke or not, it's still serious. To achieve staying power try to write good poems that you know nobody wants to read. That is: Try to write good, but try to neglect any audience of any kind. That way, when you're dead, some nobody critic will make a name for himself writing a book-long essay discovering your merit, and then you will enter the lists of great poets. That is the plan: but it is also imperative not to be too conscious of such a plan.