For more articles, videos, books, and resources about faith and art, visit RabbitRoom.com. The best advice I’ve ever heard on writing came from Stephen King: “Read a lot. Write a lot.” Today on the Substack we are tweaking King’s sage and pithy advice for our audience of poets and poetry lovers. Read a lot of poetry about poetry. Write a lot of poetry about poetry. Below you will find ten offerings from poets who are wrestling with, celebrating, and reveling in the topic of poetry in their work.

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As a native Buckeye and naturalized Hoosier, I have an immigrant’s love for—and curiosity about—our state. I grew up in hilly Northwest Ohio, home to that state’s highest point, and at the base of Mad River Mountain, which is, as you may suspect, not really a mountain. When I traveled a few hours or so to Marion, Indiana, for college, I was struck by the yawning flatness of the land, and just how far I could see over the horizon.

I was seven in 1961 when Roger Maris pursued the major league home run record and was hounded by sportswriters for the crime of challenging Babe Ruth. His teammate, Micky Mantle, who had already won a triple crown and was also chasing Ruth, was the fan favorite. Although Maris had won the MVP award in 1960 with 39 home runs, he was considered a Yankee usurper, an import from Kansas City.

It’s a long weekend in summer and the air is bad but we’ve been inside our apartment too long so we go to the movies. The air conditioning inside the Lincoln Square AMC is as big as a house, as big as a city, as big as a whole map. Movie theater air conditioning is a feeling about the mall and other people’s cars, anonymizing and blank. Every movie theater is every other movie theater; I open the door from the street and I’m not in New York, but in America, its corporatizing vastness, its false comforts, its faith in an unbroken timeline.