Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask you why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.


This site is dedicated to the memory of Mark "Jude" Hall
Contact us for more information.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're a certified dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

"For the young who want to"
From "The Moon is Always Female"
by Marge Piercy

Jude's Room

Jude's gone back
into the outer room
the painting in his head
is too big for this splattered warm-hued cave
And I'm in this '67 butterfly chair
watching the turnings of a personal world
like Miles Davis on the stereo blowing
foreign portraits only inches
off the wall
canvas corners daubed
in Siamese oils
wordless in everything so glibly stated
like entire realms of amorphous everything
nine by thirteen.

For Mark Jude Hall, 1955-199Los Angeles
by Ted Haigh
Site maintained by Barbara Foley of Craig Interactive Learning Environments.