When Myra Cohn Livingston, one of the speakers, began to talk about poetry, I started to doodle and daydream, since I knew I was not interested in poetry, of all things. Since then I have taken Myra Cohn Livingston's poetry classes five times. I have read thousands of poems, and written hundreds. I do not like many of the poems I read, and I do not like most of the poems I write. I like poems that are not afraid to talk about painful things.
Poetry is, in a way, like shouting.
Since you can't yell at the top of your lungs for a very long time, you have to decide what you really need to say, and say it quickly. In a way, too, I suppose, poetry is like math. An idea for a poem is a problem that needs to be solved-and for me, the fun is finding an answer. The above text is copied with permission of the author. She graduated from UCLA summa cum laude with a BA in history and then obtained a JD from Yale University Law School.