Friday, November 7, 2008

Pat Schneider

Poet Pat Schneider offers up some good advice to young writers on her web site. Among other things, she says, "A writer is not someone who is published, or someone who is famous. A writer is someone who writes...All important things need practice. Writing is like dancing or painting or sports -- the more you do it, the deeper and better the work will be."

(You can read the rest of her advice here under "Poems for Young Writers.")

I especially like the last line of the poem below.

The Patience of Ordinary Things
By Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

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