Denise Duhamel, Rumpus Interview

Rumpus: What do you wish you had known as a young poet just starting out? If you could give your former self one morsel of advice, what would it be?

Duhamel: While poetry was less professionalized than it is now, I still had this urge to win prizes and see my work in magazines, to get an “A,” as though poetry could be graded. I wish I had been more patient and less frantic about getting published. My advice to my younger self would have been, “Chill. Concentrate on the poems. Everything else will work itself out.”

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