The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A Self-Help Memoir

by Jeffrey Skinner

A private eye turned moderately successful poet leads readers on a satiric, hopeful tour of how to make a life in the arts, while still having a life. Revealing, hilarious, and peppered with sly takes on the ins and outs of contemporary American poetry (chapters include "The Silence of the Iambs," "The Revisionarium, Ask Dr. Frankenpoem," and "The Periodic Table of Poetic Elements"), Jeffrey Skinner offers advice, candor, and wit. Revision is the process a poem endures to become its best self.
Or, if you are the poet, you are the process a poem endures to become its best self.

Endures because a first draft, like all other objects in the universe, has inertia and would prefer to stay where it is. The poet must not collaborate.
Best self because the poem is more like a person than a thing, and does not strenuously object to personification.
Yo, poem.
But let's not get carried away. It's your poem and you can treat it as you wish; sweet talk it; push it around if that's what it takes. Alfred Hitchcock notoriously said of the actors in his movies, "They are cattle." Jeffrey Skinner is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Salt Water Amnesia (Ausable Press, 2005). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker , The Atlantic , The Nation , The American Poetry Review , Poetry , BOMB , and The Paris Review , and his work has earned awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Howard Foundation.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Writing, Biography Memoir, Self Help, Memoir, Reference

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my book for the 2019 Read Harder challenge task 9 - A book published prior to January 1, 2019, with fewer than 100 reviews on Goodreads

[Therese L. Broderick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to give this book a rating of 3.5, but no such rating exists on Goodreads. In generosity, I round-up my rating to a whole integer. I agree with much of the existing praise for this book (see other comments here on this Goodreads website). However, the book's "spin" -- spoofing Seven Habits of Highly Effective People -- grows too hectic on some pages, and lapses too limp on other pages. The book swings up and down, back and forth, as if destabilized by multiple personalities. Despite my half-point deduction, I recommend this book to any contemporary poet who is at risk of taking himself or herself too seriously (myself included). As merely an EMERGING moderately successful poet, I humbly heed the wise advice of this established writer and teacher, Mr. Jeffrey Skinner.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first impulse is to gush about this book, but I don't trust what will happen when *that* impulse intersects with my inner (and outer) reviewer and is then paired with the limited language available for such gushing. So I'll just say: GUSH. Helpful, strange, funny, and, most of all, reassuring, this book forced me to re-direct my thinking, and remember that before being a writer, a poet, I am a person. I find myself reading from it to long-distance writer friends over the phone, copying pages for my students, sending excerpts via email, and recommending it to new poets (not even "moderately successful" ones) who are struggling in any way. Thank you, Mr. Skinner.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining, humorous story of one poet's "success" that says it is aimed at poetry writers and readers—but really it’s just for the writers. Here’s a nice example of how the author combines his personal story with general lessons to be learned: “The other thing my father’s toughness taught is care for a job well done, even if the job is considered by others as trivial or unimportant. This comes in handy when writing poems.”

[Marilyn Letts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of a niche book, which felt specifically for me! If you like writing poetry; reading memoir and poetry; and laughing, this book is for you!

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are neurotypical and an MFA is an actual feasibility for you, then I don’t know why you need the ‘self-help’ part of this book. It reads a lot like, ‘well, me and all of my friends are rich, so in order to be rich, I guess you have to start off rich’. That, plus the same half worship, half distaste for mentally ill poets that I keep running into in the poetry community at large, at the same time that several of the tips are ways to become ‘just crazy enough’ to be artistic, (eg. liminal headspace, hyper focus, obsessive), and then add on that someone this in love with language can’t use the term ‘schizophrenia’ correctly, and I am left filled with enough rage to write my own damn anthology, which will never be published because of this kind of gatekeeping.

I write poetry because I love to read poetry, and when I read it, I nearly always get an urge I can’t resist to write something down. I wanted some accessible ideas on how to hone a skill I can’t stop myself from practicing, and it was the term ‘Moderately’ in the title that made this book seem accessible. It very much was not. I can’t get an MFA, and I already spend most of my life in an uncontrollable, obsessive, hyper focused, liminal space. So, thanks for nothing.

The only reason this is more than one star is I think the author ought to just write a damn PI novel, a noir satire. Not a lofty, artistic pursuit, perhaps, but it would be extremely entertaining, because those were the best parts of this book.

[Nate Trier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, breezy, irreverent take on a life in poetry. Skinner reminds me of my favorite writing professor, who would share what wisdom he had but never pretended to have all the answers. There are digressions and asides that are fun if you take them for what they are.

[Laura Daniels · Rating 4 out of 5]

A humorous autobiographical novel with great practices for poets.
Be sure to read all the passages in italics.
They contained the heart of the poet's practices and had great value.
My big takeaway was to look for the poetry in the non-poets who surround and outnumber me.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable, breezy read. There is lots of smart, sane thinking here about writing and the "Po-Biz," as Skinner likes to refer to it, and an exercise or two I may remember, but mostly I think I'll recall the unusual passages about Skinner's pre-academy life as a private investigator and then a security guard at his father's business. Part of the point being: you never know where poetry, or a poetic vocation, will come from. Come to think about it, I'll also remember Skinner's heartbreaking recollections of having his work decimated by Philip Levine and Robert Bly, and ignored by other luminaries he hoped to get close to. All this is told with admirable humor. Reassurance for those of us who have never felt good at the mentor/mentee dance.

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was in the right mood for this book, needing to flip my perspective on writing a bit, and this was just the book. Nothing earth-shattering, but funny anecdotes and good reminders to keep your eye on the ball, because that's all you can do.

Favorite quotes:

"Don't write about what you know - write about what has made you ill with interest, what has infected you."

I think it was in his book that I saw this Jane Hirshfield quote:

"Cultivate necessary selfishness. The world - even the literary world - will ask you to do everything except write a new poem. That, you must ask of yourself." -J. Hirshfield

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointing read. It's not that it's bad, it's just that there is nothing new here either in what he says or how he says it. Not as funny as I think we are supposed to think it is, for one thing. And at least one chapter seemed to have nothing at all to do with the book's point.

I gave it two stars instead of one because the one new thing he does talk about is the fact that if a poet is successful at all, it will most likely be a modest success and that it is the poems that count, not the career.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fantastic. It is an honest and realistic book about the work and business of writing poetry as well as practices conducive to writing poetry from a poet and professor. It is also told with so much humour as not to seem like a text book or work book; filled with personal anecdotes so it comes off more like a memoir.

[Curt Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically, a how-to book for poets written by a wry "moderately successful poet" and former private investigator. He's not as funny as he thinks he is, but there is some good stuff about the slippery and shiny path of poetry writing.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, self-deprecating, insightful, oh-so-true, delightfully gossipy. Thought-provoking, reassuring, and helpful. Also, did I mention funny?

[Kyla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moderately helpful and interesting - and I mean that as a compliment.

[Scott Simpson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not amazing, and the humor is occasionally hokey, but I think there's some good, specific advice here for people trying to make any kind of art.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good-enough (and sometimes more than good-enough) deflating of the Poetry Biz.

[Farrah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful. Funny. Witty. Honest. Brilliant.