If You Want to Be a Poet, Hang Out with Words

I was watching an Academy of American Poets documentary with Anthony Hecht the other night, and he mentioned something simple and brilliant that W.H. Auden had once said (never mind the male-centric terminology here; it was a long time ago!). A quick Internet search turned this up: 

 “W. H. Auden was once asked what advice he would give to a young man who wished to become a poet. Auden replied that he would ask the young man why he wanted to write poetry. If the answer was ‘because I have something important to say,’ Auden would conclude that there was no hope for the young man as a poet. If on the other hand the answer was something like ‘because I like to hang around words and overhear them talking to one another,’ then that young man was at least interested in a fundamental part of the poetic process and and there was hope for him.” 

- John Ciardi in How Does a Poem Mean? (Houghton Mifflin, 1959). Part Three of An Introduction to Literature by Herbert Barrows, Hubert Heffner, John Ciardi and Wallace Douglas.