Finding Helpful Readers

The success of an MFA program isn’t measured in how many poems you publish or whether you find an agent, or even in how many pages you manage to write; it’s in the friendships you form, and in the number of helpful readers you find. A great workshop, I tell my own students, is one in which you find one or two useful readers, and one or two writers whose work excites you. Hold these people close; don’t lose touch; do the work of maintaining those friendships. Read their poems and stories and essays, honestly and generously; celebrate their successes; help them see disappointments, which are inevitable, in the proper scale.

GARTH GREENWELL