Practicing to be Nobody-But-Yourself
The lesson comes from E E Cummings’s A Poet’s Advice to Students. Cummings is one of the great poets of the 20th century. He had fought in WWI, traveled throughout Europe and Africa in the 1930s, lived with Picasso in Paris when it was in the peak of literature with the likes of the Fitzgeralds, Stein, and Hemingway.
His advice is a short piece but it starts with a bang that left me thinking “Jesus Christ I wish I can write like that."
"A lot of people think or believe or know they feel-but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling-not knowing or believing or thinking.”
"Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.”
At the core of poetry—really, every craft—is the importance of being nobody-but-yourself. It’s a truly difficult task, which is why it’ll probably take a lot of effort throughout one’s life. If it was easy, we’d all be master poets.
"As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine.”
"If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed."
Finally, Cummings ends with the truth. That you can’t blame parents, teachers, or mentors for guiding you down the path of least resistance. When they tell you to go to a good school, get a designation, or get a job in a big company.
"And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world-unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.”
What they do is take on the thankless role of being the source of blame for your weak-ass mind. If you couldn’t disagree or go against the advice of people you trust and love you back, there is no way you would’ve survived pursuing an unconventional path like poetry. But you’ll not admit that and like the rest of the herd, you will complain and blame the system.
The system was designed for that. It was designed to house the people who wouldn’t have been able to cut it in the competitive world outside the system. The system was designed for people who love complaining. If you really had the balls for it, then you would’ve ignored what others told you and gone to do the things you wanted to do already. Don’t blame others. Don’t complain about the system. Cummings merely laid out the truth oh so eloquently.