many-faced poem it comes up as Thunder
head ready to break roiling dark and
comes up as sunflower or corn stock but
in kernels of life or comes up earthy
and sweet a soil turned by backhoe or
perhaps as dog nosing its way hard
between us at the hushed crack and flash
of storm clearing its throat for the
first fearsome word on November 11 2016
my dream Press published my first
collection of poetry the following year
the New York Times named me one of six
contemporary American poets and a
special feature titled America today
envisioned as verse clearly I had made
it right the thing is I never wanted to
be a poet I wanted to be a novelist as
soon as I learned to read I devoured
everything books comics food ingredient
lists restaurant menus even the bottoms
of tissue boxes I love stories so much
that I wanted to recreate that joy for
other people I started writing my own
stories little half page scribbles
influenced by books like Harry Potter
Lord of the Rings and a ton of
videogames my scribbles turned into
exercises of the fantastic and the
supernatural and I admit I’ve also
written my fair share of Nintendo fan
fiction in high school I decided I
wanted to write the next great American
fantasy novel I even had a 10-year plan
graduate from my dream University attend
the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop
for my MFA published my best-selling
novel by 25 get a tenure track job
teaching creative writing at some
liberal arts college in the Northeast
and live with a big fluffy dog named
I failed at all of those things
in fact I failed at nearly everything
I’ve worked for failure has many faces
but I’ve learned to embrace these three
rules as an important part of my
creative process one in order to fail
you must first have a vision the vision
I had for my life didn’t quite pan out
to give you a bit of background I was
born in South Korea and adopted as a
baby to a family in rural upstate New
York
I was also homeschooled so when I got to
college I wanted to study everything
between massive credit overload and my
part-time job I didn’t have time to
write my great American fantasy novel
instead I just dashed off short poems
just to have something to share with my
writing groups every week senior year in
college I met with my thesis advisor to
talk about grad schools let me preface
this by saying that this professor is
still one of my dearest mentors and I
admire him for his unflinching honesty
two important things happened in that
meeting first my professor said my
fiction was terrible and I wouldn’t get
into any MFA programs with the writing
symbols I had I was crushed but he was
right and we both knew it I hadn’t put
any real time or energy into my fiction
I hadn’t been practicing to be good
enough to write that best-selling novel
I had totally failed myself the second
thing that happened it was that my
professor followed up his soul-crushing
statement by saying that if I wanted to
stay on track with my MFA applications I
might have a shot with poetry in the end
I decided to salvage my 10-year plan and
follow his advice this decision was not
easy for me but I realized that the
reason my failure hurts so much was
because I care deeply about my dreams
which is a good thing having a vision
worth working toward and then actually
failing at it meant that at least I was
working towards something great if you
don’t set goals you can’t fail
but you can’t succeed either so
difficult balance between what you can
do and what you want to do which leads
me to my second point sometimes you fail
things and sometimes things fail you
after nine rejections I was thankfully
accepted to an MFA program for poetry
although I had only dabbled in it before
I was fully committed to this whole
poetry thing I studied hard and I wrote
like crazy and was actually having fun
who knew that a failed fiction writer
could enjoy writing poetry so much about
two months into my final year my advisor
and I sat down to talk about my thesis
let me preface this by saying that this
professor too is still one of my dearest
mentors and he is admirably direct sound
familiar
he said Marcy if you want to graduate in
the spring you’re not writing poems fast
enough but I was doing all the right
things
I just wasn’t writing good poems fast
enough my creativity was failing me and
I was failing poetry I had to redirect
my energy I went back to the drawing
board
what was I passionate about rewind to my
failed fiction roots okay what do I love
about stories world-building heroic
characters unusual and obscure facts but
how to translate all of that into what I
was doing now remember too that I’m
adopted
I grew up without very with very little
access to my Asian culture so I’ve spent
years researching Korean history as a
way to reconnect with my motherland why
not combine all of that what was poetry
somehow I had come across this article
in The New York Times about these older
Korean women on Jeju Island who could
hold their breath for three minutes at a
time while they free dived to harvest
pearls and other sea creatures
unfortunately it’s a dying art because
not many young women are going into the
business so these 60 and 70 year old
pearl divers might be the last of their
profession as an adoptee I thought what
if I were descended from these fierce
amaze
being women what if I were to write an
ode to their way of life so I started
doing more research and suddenly ideas
began pouring out
I couldn’t stop writing and then over
the next several months and before I
knew it I was defending a complete
thesis manuscript on time the thing is
that technically I knew how to write
poems and I was writing poems but I knew
I could do so much better that failure
forced me to redirect my focus dig a
little deeper and try something new to
jumpstart my creative process you can’t
control everything that happens or
doesn’t happen but you can control how
you react sometimes the best thing to do
when you’re failing or when things are
failing you is redirect your attention
to a new and perhaps unexpected source
of inspiration my last point is that
failure is a choice
what is the difference between failing
at something and still working toward it
your attitude in his book the new good
news about what’s bad for you and the
bad news about what’s good for you
author Jeff Walzer says that we need
failure it serves as feedback
he says failure is the backbone of the
scientific method we cook up a
hypothesis we test it and if our
experiment fails we challenge that
hypothesis and make it better why then
are we so afraid to acknowledge that
failure is also a necessary part of the
creative process when I felt that my
manuscript was as good as I could get it
I started sending it out for publication
it can take up to a year to hear back
from publishers and book contests and in
those first 12 months I received 26
flat-out rejection
I took it really hard I began to
question everything I knew about poetry
again I have bad poet she just burned
this manuscript and start over I ripped
apart my work trying to re-envision it
completely and
next year I send it out to 14 new places
this time to separate publishers wanted
it and my first poetry collection came
out a year later with one of my favorite
presses of all time in order for my
thesis manuscript to become a real book
in the world I had to accept every
failure as a learning opportunity rather
than the end of a dream it said the
Thomas Edison tested nearly 10,000
prototypes of the lightboard
bulb before he built one that worked
he’s famously quoted as saying I have
not failed 10,000 times I have not
failed once I have succeeded in proving
that 10,000 ways will not work when I
have eliminated the ways that will work
I will find the way that works sometimes
failure is just one step of the learning
process on the path to success so I’ll
remember you cannot fail without first
having a vision but you can’t succeed
either there are many types of failure
some you can control some you can’t if
you are willing to work to achieve a
dream you will fail sometimes a lot but
what you choose to do with that failure
is up to you sometimes you need to
redirect your creative focus to
something entirely new and sometimes you
need to learn from your mistakes and
keep at it
so I encourage you to take risks for
your dreams to fail spectacularly but
fail because failure means you have a
true vision that you really care about
and you’re willing to put a hundred
percent behind it
I still haven’t written a word of that
great American fantasy novel I never
attended my dream universities and my
first book came out well after my
twenty-fifth year today I’m a program
coordinator for one of the largest book
fairs in the country but I’m not
teaching and I don’t have a big fluffy
dog named Bowser I have two short-haired
dogs named after famous poets but I’m
really happy about how my old dreams
have turned into
new ones I’d like to close with the
first poem I wrote after my manuscript
had been rejected that first round when
I thought maybe I should quit poetry
moved back to upstate New York
this poem reminds me to embrace failure
to welcome it as part of my creative
process because you never know what
might happen it’s called – Diaz Miami
everything here is from somewhere else
the coffee the milk
the woman bending over her lunch even
the fresh cut gold of mango running
between her fingers even the ocean
gathering itself and it’s children from
the streets paved with palm fronds and
heat the turtles are not from here the
manatees the alligators even the heat is
from somewhere else
Puerto Rico Haiti Ohio Dwyane Wade is
from somewhere else
Dwayne the rock Johnson Satya Cruz
Romero Britto pitbull was from here with
his 305 anthem and then he wasn’t Carl
Hiaasen wasn’t Sylvester Stallone wasn’t
I wasn’t and suddenly I was now it seems
I am part of this nation of heat that
drives down into the lungs of this Magic
City
every day storm sky in the rearview I
loved café Bustelo cortadito sweet with
sugar cane steady in the cupholder of a
car I drove down from New York here
every morning I shake my head to the man
selling limes or guavas or roses beneath
the red traffic light every afternoon I
walked to a little cafe window for
empanadas one carne one hamona Kissel
practicing the roll out of ours in a
language meant for somewhere else every
night I Drive back out of the throat of
this city where even the walls say adios
as if they know I’m not
from here as if they know I’m already
halfway gone thank you
[Music] [Applause]
head ready to break roiling dark and
comes up as sunflower or corn stock but
in kernels of life or comes up earthy
and sweet a soil turned by backhoe or
perhaps as dog nosing its way hard
between us at the hushed crack and flash
of storm clearing its throat for the
first fearsome word on November 11 2016
my dream Press published my first
collection of poetry the following year
the New York Times named me one of six
contemporary American poets and a
special feature titled America today
envisioned as verse clearly I had made
it right the thing is I never wanted to
be a poet I wanted to be a novelist as
soon as I learned to read I devoured
everything books comics food ingredient
lists restaurant menus even the bottoms
of tissue boxes I love stories so much
that I wanted to recreate that joy for
other people I started writing my own
stories little half page scribbles
influenced by books like Harry Potter
Lord of the Rings and a ton of
videogames my scribbles turned into
exercises of the fantastic and the
supernatural and I admit I’ve also
written my fair share of Nintendo fan
fiction in high school I decided I
wanted to write the next great American
fantasy novel I even had a 10-year plan
graduate from my dream University attend
the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop
for my MFA published my best-selling
novel by 25 get a tenure track job
teaching creative writing at some
liberal arts college in the Northeast
and live with a big fluffy dog named
I failed at all of those things
in fact I failed at nearly everything
I’ve worked for failure has many faces
but I’ve learned to embrace these three
rules as an important part of my
creative process one in order to fail
you must first have a vision the vision
I had for my life didn’t quite pan out
to give you a bit of background I was
born in South Korea and adopted as a
baby to a family in rural upstate New
York
I was also homeschooled so when I got to
college I wanted to study everything
between massive credit overload and my
part-time job I didn’t have time to
write my great American fantasy novel
instead I just dashed off short poems
just to have something to share with my
writing groups every week senior year in
college I met with my thesis advisor to
talk about grad schools let me preface
this by saying that this professor is
still one of my dearest mentors and I
admire him for his unflinching honesty
two important things happened in that
meeting first my professor said my
fiction was terrible and I wouldn’t get
into any MFA programs with the writing
symbols I had I was crushed but he was
right and we both knew it I hadn’t put
any real time or energy into my fiction
I hadn’t been practicing to be good
enough to write that best-selling novel
I had totally failed myself the second
thing that happened it was that my
professor followed up his soul-crushing
statement by saying that if I wanted to
stay on track with my MFA applications I
might have a shot with poetry in the end
I decided to salvage my 10-year plan and
follow his advice this decision was not
easy for me but I realized that the
reason my failure hurts so much was
because I care deeply about my dreams
which is a good thing having a vision
worth working toward and then actually
failing at it meant that at least I was
working towards something great if you
don’t set goals you can’t fail
but you can’t succeed either so
difficult balance between what you can
do and what you want to do which leads
me to my second point sometimes you fail
things and sometimes things fail you
after nine rejections I was thankfully
accepted to an MFA program for poetry
although I had only dabbled in it before
I was fully committed to this whole
poetry thing I studied hard and I wrote
like crazy and was actually having fun
who knew that a failed fiction writer
could enjoy writing poetry so much about
two months into my final year my advisor
and I sat down to talk about my thesis
let me preface this by saying that this
professor too is still one of my dearest
mentors and he is admirably direct sound
familiar
he said Marcy if you want to graduate in
the spring you’re not writing poems fast
enough but I was doing all the right
things
I just wasn’t writing good poems fast
enough my creativity was failing me and
I was failing poetry I had to redirect
my energy I went back to the drawing
board
what was I passionate about rewind to my
failed fiction roots okay what do I love
about stories world-building heroic
characters unusual and obscure facts but
how to translate all of that into what I
was doing now remember too that I’m
adopted
I grew up without very with very little
access to my Asian culture so I’ve spent
years researching Korean history as a
way to reconnect with my motherland why
not combine all of that what was poetry
somehow I had come across this article
in The New York Times about these older
Korean women on Jeju Island who could
hold their breath for three minutes at a
time while they free dived to harvest
pearls and other sea creatures
unfortunately it’s a dying art because
not many young women are going into the
business so these 60 and 70 year old
pearl divers might be the last of their
profession as an adoptee I thought what
if I were descended from these fierce
amaze
being women what if I were to write an
ode to their way of life so I started
doing more research and suddenly ideas
began pouring out
I couldn’t stop writing and then over
the next several months and before I
knew it I was defending a complete
thesis manuscript on time the thing is
that technically I knew how to write
poems and I was writing poems but I knew
I could do so much better that failure
forced me to redirect my focus dig a
little deeper and try something new to
jumpstart my creative process you can’t
control everything that happens or
doesn’t happen but you can control how
you react sometimes the best thing to do
when you’re failing or when things are
failing you is redirect your attention
to a new and perhaps unexpected source
of inspiration my last point is that
failure is a choice
what is the difference between failing
at something and still working toward it
your attitude in his book the new good
news about what’s bad for you and the
bad news about what’s good for you
author Jeff Walzer says that we need
failure it serves as feedback
he says failure is the backbone of the
scientific method we cook up a
hypothesis we test it and if our
experiment fails we challenge that
hypothesis and make it better why then
are we so afraid to acknowledge that
failure is also a necessary part of the
creative process when I felt that my
manuscript was as good as I could get it
I started sending it out for publication
it can take up to a year to hear back
from publishers and book contests and in
those first 12 months I received 26
flat-out rejection
I took it really hard I began to
question everything I knew about poetry
again I have bad poet she just burned
this manuscript and start over I ripped
apart my work trying to re-envision it
completely and
next year I send it out to 14 new places
this time to separate publishers wanted
it and my first poetry collection came
out a year later with one of my favorite
presses of all time in order for my
thesis manuscript to become a real book
in the world I had to accept every
failure as a learning opportunity rather
than the end of a dream it said the
Thomas Edison tested nearly 10,000
prototypes of the lightboard
bulb before he built one that worked
he’s famously quoted as saying I have
not failed 10,000 times I have not
failed once I have succeeded in proving
that 10,000 ways will not work when I
have eliminated the ways that will work
I will find the way that works sometimes
failure is just one step of the learning
process on the path to success so I’ll
remember you cannot fail without first
having a vision but you can’t succeed
either there are many types of failure
some you can control some you can’t if
you are willing to work to achieve a
dream you will fail sometimes a lot but
what you choose to do with that failure
is up to you sometimes you need to
redirect your creative focus to
something entirely new and sometimes you
need to learn from your mistakes and
keep at it
so I encourage you to take risks for
your dreams to fail spectacularly but
fail because failure means you have a
true vision that you really care about
and you’re willing to put a hundred
percent behind it
I still haven’t written a word of that
great American fantasy novel I never
attended my dream universities and my
first book came out well after my
twenty-fifth year today I’m a program
coordinator for one of the largest book
fairs in the country but I’m not
teaching and I don’t have a big fluffy
dog named Bowser I have two short-haired
dogs named after famous poets but I’m
really happy about how my old dreams
have turned into
new ones I’d like to close with the
first poem I wrote after my manuscript
had been rejected that first round when
I thought maybe I should quit poetry
moved back to upstate New York
this poem reminds me to embrace failure
to welcome it as part of my creative
process because you never know what
might happen it’s called – Diaz Miami
everything here is from somewhere else
the coffee the milk
the woman bending over her lunch even
the fresh cut gold of mango running
between her fingers even the ocean
gathering itself and it’s children from
the streets paved with palm fronds and
heat the turtles are not from here the
manatees the alligators even the heat is
from somewhere else
Puerto Rico Haiti Ohio Dwyane Wade is
from somewhere else
Dwayne the rock Johnson Satya Cruz
Romero Britto pitbull was from here with
his 305 anthem and then he wasn’t Carl
Hiaasen wasn’t Sylvester Stallone wasn’t
I wasn’t and suddenly I was now it seems
I am part of this nation of heat that
drives down into the lungs of this Magic
City
every day storm sky in the rearview I
loved café Bustelo cortadito sweet with
sugar cane steady in the cupholder of a
car I drove down from New York here
every morning I shake my head to the man
selling limes or guavas or roses beneath
the red traffic light every afternoon I
walked to a little cafe window for
empanadas one carne one hamona Kissel
practicing the roll out of ours in a
language meant for somewhere else every
night I Drive back out of the throat of
this city where even the walls say adios
as if they know I’m not
from here as if they know I’m already
halfway gone thank you
[Music] [Applause]
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