How I Became a Poet

In the summer of 1995 I was hospitalized for a manic episode. I was only sixteen years old. During that time I had been keeping a journal in which I wrote all sorts of erratic stories and poems. Actually, I'm not sure what I wrote, as I don't remember it well. I do, however, remember writing one story in which a goat was the speaker. 

When I was in the hospital I read "To a Waterfowl" by William Cullen Bryant and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. Up until that time pretty much the only thing I had read in depth was the Bible. But I greatly enjoyed both of these works.

By the time I was a senior in high school I had written my first coherent poem. And by the time I was 21 years old I decided to become a serious reader. I started reading novels and poems in depth. I read two novels that year: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and Breadgivers by Anzia Yizerska. I am a slow reader, so this took me a long time. I also began reading poetry every day.

I became active in an online poetry workshop called the Gazebo. (I don't recommend that poets participate in online poetry workshops anymore, because magazines no longer knowingly accept poetry that has been publicly posted online.) Anyway, my poetry greatly improved, and later that year I had my first published poem. I was published in the Melic Review, which was a high-quality online literary review. 

From here on out I kept reading every day and writing when I was inspired.