Host: Oh, hello there! I'm sorry I didn't notice you before...How rude of me to neglect such a distinguished house guest!

Um...ok...I really only have one rule, a pet peeve if you will...please, no shoes on the carpet. Just place them next to the welcome mat on the hardwood floor in front of doorway. Thank you.

So, why are you here? Ah, I apologize, this is a stupid question. You are here as a student of poetry. A student of poetry curious to hear what an expert has to say about the art of crafting words into poems, those little things with stanzas.

Why are you still standing? Please, sit. Do not mind that my chair his higher than yours and obviously better lit by the fire. That is probably just a mistake in the feng shui of the room. I am by no means suggesting that I am better than you or trying to belittle you in any way...could you adjust your chair a little lower please? Thank you.

(The host takes a long slow drag from his pipe. He coughs out the smoke like gray strands of vomit that dissolve in the air. Hunched over in agony, he lets the smoke settle before he raises his head again in the headrest of his chair uncertainly like the burned end of a match.)

What am I smoking? Well, I only smoke the pages of my rough drafts! There are so few of them I really don't mind smoking my lungs black with them on occasion. Do you want to try? No? Well, when you are at my level of expertise, you will be doing these same kinds of things.

Well, I guess I really haven't elaborated on anything even resembling poetry yet, so, I guess, let us proceed...with trembling fingertips.

(The host hoists up onto a nearby coffee table a tome of ginormous proportions. The title of the book is "Greatest Poems of the Last Thousand Centuries.")

Yeah, you see this book? Take a long look at it.

(He immediately tosses the book into the fire which engulfs it like a hungry pit of orange critics cackling with each other.)

The first rule of poetry is to not take what has come before either too seriously or with too little consequence.

Here, let me explain. You could've read the entirety of that text from cover to cover and studied each of its diverse poetical techniques word for word, meter for meter, thinly disguised erotic metaphor to thinly disguised erotic metaphor, and, when you found yourself before the page ready to assemble your own unique assortment of words into a poem, you would come up short.

We can study all the aspects of a poem and repeat each line until we are blue in the face, and it's inner mechanisms will remain a mystery to us. Why? Because the best of poetry is reciprocated through burst of creative inspiration to burst of creative inspiration. We do not learn the virtues of poetry through the dust of classrooms and disgusting breath of professors pretending to be helpful but just flirting with us. We learn by breathing the fresh air in the world of a poem and giving the words inside us momentum for their wings.

Then we ring out each word for every single drop of poetry like a thirsty traveler and, after that, crush each line like a tiny stack of vertebrae and assemble it in the way we want to because we will go to any lengths to avoid plagiarism.

I'm sorry, I got kind of off track there. Sometimes I confuse poetry with my old poaching days. I collect exotic word uses almost as much as the heads of beautiful exotic animals, up there, above the mantle piece. If I valued the sanctity of any lives at all, like I do the sanctity of our language, it would certainly be theirs. Those beautiful, unique souls. God bless every one of them and the privilege I have had of a life touched and enriched by theirs. *Wipes away a tear streaming down his cheek.*

Wait, where are you going? I've only but just begun! You can't tell me that this brief discussion has satisfied all your pressing questions about poetry! Please return to your seat, the fire has not quite burned low enough and I can see embers curiosity in your eyes.

Great, thank you. Thank you for your enduring patience. If I have caused you any injury in any way, please let it be remedied by the next point I have taken such a troublesome time in coming to.

The second rule to poetry is to not care substantially too much or too little on the opinions of others in regards to the artful and often not so artful but awful stylistic decisions you choose to make in your poetry.

For this example, I want to use the most famous of the famous poets out there. I want to include a rare poet of such incomparable reputation and significance that when other poets read their name, or hear of it with ringing ears, their heads bow out of shame and they never want to put another letter to paper ever again.

I want to mention a poet whose existence is so sketchy, so questionable, that they do not actually exist. I'm, of course, talking about the poet, whose name I made up off the top of my head, Mr. Dillion Philip Gilligan.

That's right, let's say Mr. Dillion Phillip Gilligan came up to you with a document of recently reviewed poems you have him maybe a week or so ago. He just plops the poems down in your out-reaching arms, pouts, and walks away without saying anything.

This of course wrenches your insides and shreds every fiber of confidence you lied to yourself about even pretending to have before your good old friend Mr. Dillion Philip Gilligan returned your poems to you most unceremoniously and stomped off into the imaginary crowd leaving you gagging on a mouthful of your own unanswered questions.

This distressing dilemma could end in a number of different but predictable ways: self inflicted, internal anguish, self-righteous delusions of grandeur and ensuing overestimation of one's talents, chalking up the whole situation to a possible misunderstanding, or perpetual doubt as to how you will ever put another word to paper again.

You see? You see how much of our worth is bound to what our peers think of us and what we are afraid our peers are thinking of us when they may not have actually ever though of us at all because they either never existed or never met us?

You could let that bother you until the day you die and harm your art for the rest of a life spent whimpering and wasting away in your room letting the few rays that escape the curtains burn your vampiric skin, or you could toughen up, let your work become time tested and refine your own methods of writing poetry while keeping yourself in check with the thoughts and constructive input of others.

If you listen to them to much, on one hand, they will be right some of the time, but you will also neglect the times you are right. What? Are you really going to listen to them when you've developed a voice as reputable and masterly as, dare I say his name, Dillion Phillip Gilligan!!

Hmmm...I guess my voice isn't anywhere near as intriguing as Dillon's. I notice your cranium has sunk a little to deeply into the headrest of your chair for my comfort. Am I really that tedious to listen to? Are my words so boring as to make you feel stranded here like on a deserted island with my thoughts gnawing at you like sharks? Well, please, bare with me. The fire is a flare arching into the night but we are still under enough of its glow to keep going.

Alright, for your weary head, here it is, the third rule of poetry: do not read more than you write, or write more than you read.

To articulate this next point on poetry, I'm going to need some audience participation. The fire has died down enough for you to safely plunge your hands into the remnants. Go ahead. I swear there is a reason that I will reveal shortly. Perform the action before it is my turn to become impatient and rest my head in a disrespectful manner in my chair! As I said, it should be safe; you have my word.

Whoops! I guess not. I apologize whole-heartedly. We will tend to those burns later, but right now, the burden of unspeakable pain is antecedent to poetry.

Those ashes I mentioned, they once made up the structure of that book much like sand is adequate for building a sandcastle, although you can make castles out of other materials, it doesn't have to be sand every time. People seem to only be interested in making impermanent sand castles anymore. Anyway, try and mould the now cold ashes into how they were before the fire combusted it into the grayish dust that makes my nostrils quite uncomfortable, teasing me with a delayed sneeze that just isn't coming. Ugh.

Oh! Well there it is! You have done it! I didn't actually expect you to complete the task, thought it absurdly impossible actually, but good job! Here it is, sturdy on the table with hardly a word missing!

Let's say, for arguments sake that, this activity did go according to my wishes and, as anticipated, you did not finish the worthless task of reworking this book of poems from scratch, and honestly, I'm still scratching my head as to how you we're even able to it.

Let's say that the only reward for taking on this task was, of course, nothing other than an awareness of the absolute fruitlessness of the task as the last ember among the ash trembled away dramatically like a sunset.

What a waste of time that would be! While you were brushing through the ashes of what cannot be brought back (or so I thought) like a stubborn archaeologist in a empty sandbox, you could've been figuring out how to write your own, word for word!

During the times you don't write, your words build up inside of you much like many grains of sand and your many unused rhythms splash the shore of random words and letters like the debris of a shipwreck that never happened.

But while you are writing and thinking you don't have time to set aside and relax and let the tide of reading take you away in sentences as soothing as the massaging fingers of seaweed, you are not giving the words in your mind to enough time to form the root systems that support the poem's beautiful surface unfurling both like a tropical flower and the over-complicated scientific name it will be given by some scientist who, I assume, rarely goes outside to actually admire its beauty and curses the very sunlight it converts to food.

Reading is a wonderfully fun way to make a catalog in your head of all the stylistic and syllabic quirks out there that you can rework and tweak into your own versions. However, if you read to much without enough practice, the sharpness of your poetic repertoire could weaken like sandcastles collapsing under antsy, impatient waves like urge to use words itself becoming its own undoing.

Have you understood everything I've said so far? No? Really? Well technically it's not really my job to be a teacher. So...

Well, I'd better hurry up then. Without further ado, the fourth rule of poetry: do your poetical subject justice and, in the words of the late, great Robin Williams, never let your poems be ordinary!

I realize I am contradicting this sentiment a bit, a lot of poetry enthusiasts have used this example from the legendary movie Dead Poets Society. I am certainly not the first, and perhaps it is cliche by now, but I don't care, it's MY turn to use the example!

Robin Williams as, teacher John Keating, rejected the textbook mechanisms of poetry that perpetuate the status quo and the sound of tearing could be heard in his classroom as his students removed the atrocious, artificial definitions of poetry from their textbooks and minds like a tumor that feeds on artistic expression.

Keating, in another physical act that represents what is happening in the minds and perspectives of his students, stands on his desk like a mountaintop, not to exalt himself above them in stature, but to encourage them upward and help dispel the musk of traditional instruction murking the room like centuries of chalk dust.

Keating urges his students from their sitting positions like a classroom of statues coming to life up onto their cliff-like desks while stretching their limbs like stiff metrical lines to behold poetry and its golden rays breaking through old ways off seeing things.

Each student has their own wavelength, there own frequency that, perhaps somewhat dim on its own, joins the others in a shimmering chorus that dawns over a world yawning of boredom.

"That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."

Do it! Find and amplify your voice before the damp grave takes in from you and takes the place of your mouth, moaning with a nasty case of pneumonia before it is closed until the end of time.

Do it, because the only poetry for the dead is engraved, or, in some cases, vandalized into their gravestones.

I cannot wait to see what shape your words assume while documenting the best of this life and making sure at these one gem in the tumbling sands of time remembers humanity.

I'm sure you have much to say now! Go ahead. I am all ears!

Guest: Yes. Thank you for finally giving me the chance to speak. I actually disagree with some of the points you made and must ask clarification on some of the muddier aspects of your argument...

Um...what are you doing? I thought it was my turn to carry on the conversation?

The host was asleep in his chair and snoring in iambic pentameter. He was as still and serene as the busts of animals decorating his mantle. His pipe tipped face down on his pant leg and flames lapped the fabric, creeping down to his knee. This did not wake him and one must wonder what dangers the pain was being translated into by his dream self in the adventures of his dream world.