The definition of advice reads: “guidance or recommendations concerning prudent future action, typically given by someone regarded as knowledgeable or authoritative.” There are times when we can benefit from sound advice. We know the internet has changed the way we interact with each other, and it has also changed the way we receive advice. For most of the 20th century, newspapers were the typical advice-column medium. While traditional staples like Dear Abby and Ask Amy remain, other, newer columns have proliferated across the Internet to cater to a wide diversity of readers. Years have passed and advice-giving is just as popular as ever.
What’s the best advice you ever received? Sometimes the right words are a lot like tools to make life a little easier. If you could go back in time and speak to your 12-year old self, what might you say?
Try It
Write a poem addressed to your 12-year old self. What kind of sound advice and common sense will you impart? Will you warn of the pitfalls of life? Cheer on the mistakes yet to come? Tell the words your young self needs to hear…with poetry.
Featured Poem
Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a poem from Monica we enjoyed:
Normal Life calibrates the clock. You awake,
prepare strong coffee, check off to-dos, come home
to a dinner of leftovers, and whether thinned hours
whooshed in a storm of stress or minutes ambled,
Normal is the standard of the speed of time. But
a glitch, a tilt
of life over a pivot,
a fault line shocked
to magnitude
seven point nine
splitting a fissure through now
and an hour before,
cancels the calibration.
Quantities of measurement shaken,
the observer, moving or not, changes
frames of reference—stretching, blurring,
curving the line from yesterday to forever.
Photo by Eduardo Diez Viñuela. Creative Commons via Flickr.
Browse more Time poems
Browse more writing prompts
Browse poetry teaching resources
How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.
“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland
- Poetry Prompt: Misunderstood Lion - March 19, 2018
- Animate: Lions & Lambs Poetry Prompt - March 12, 2018
- Poetry Prompt: Behind the Velvet Rope - February 26, 2018
Rick Maxson says
“Normal is the standard of the speed of time.”
I love this line, Monica! To me it encompasses so much. Normal is relative to each life, if only slightly different. And yet, it is a standard. We all say, “That’s normal.”
Wonderful poem.
Rick Maxson says
Advise To My Younger Self
Life is not long.
The trace of down that remains
in the bulk of you will fail, and the curl
will coarsen, the curl will drown you,
and you will lose your footprints
in the moist sand of nostalgia.
This ocean is a memory that has stolen
everything and steals it now.
So walk.
There is only salty water behind you;
love may not come from what you love;
you cannot always choose
the doorway that opens your life.
Sandra Heska King says
“love may not come from what you love”
Thinking on this. Time holds all kinds of surprises, doesn’t it?
Bethany R. says
“So walk.
There is only salty water behind you;
love may not come from what you love;
you cannot always choose
the doorway that opens your life.”
I appreciate this advice and the poetic way you’ve layed it out, Rick.
Sandra Heska King says
The glitches and pivots and shocked fault lines that split fissures through now…
My goodness, Monica! This poem is so powerful. Is that one of Glynn’s overused words? If so, I don’t care. It’s powerful.
Bethany R. says
You crack me up, Sandra.
Monica Sharman says
Proof of a good article: when someone remembers it long, long after. Nice work, Glynn!
Monica Sharman says
Ah! Thank you for the feature! And how appropriate that a poem making reference to relativity gets featured on Einstein’s birthday!
Believe it or not, the junior high years (including age 12) were good years for me. We’ll see if a poem comes out of 7th grade. 🙂
S. Wesley Mcgranor says
10-4
Andrew H says
Right week? Right week. 😛
You Must Grow Up
You sit, and think of little much of matter
For you are young. You have just started books,
A bit late but you do enjoy to read of Harry Potter
And all of his adventures. Life is such a journey,
But less friendly. There is not one Dark Lord,
But many. All of them will name you friend
And not betray you ’til the end. But you must beware
Of falseness, hidden though it is in frown and stare.
You must grow up, alas, and face the world.
The times to come will not be hard, not in the measure
Of true sorrow or of pain, but they will be a trial for you
If not to others. Soon, you will know what is death
And see the coffin walk the long black mile,
The people trailing through in double file.
They’ll weep, and shower on the dark-stained soil
But in the end they’ll talk and laugh, for they
Have walked that road a thousand times and know
You must grow up, alas, and face the world.
Then comfort comes upon you like a wave
And drags you down. You study for a time,
And live the life you wanted. But what end
Was there to reach for? Nothing but the endless dark,
The grasping of the years. But you are just a child,
And so you can not understand. That rests in front,
That wondering on why and where. Because of this,
I beg of you to pity those who whisper in your ear that
You must grow up, alas, and face the world.
Dolly Lee says
Monica,
This struck me: “stretching, blurring/
curving the line from yesterday to forever.” It gave me this image of an image panning from one side into infinity….although I know we can’t see into infinity but it was the image that came to mind 🙂
Thanks!
Glynn says
To a 12-year-old self
You’re still a kid,
at 12, collecting stamps,
trying to play street
football, rolling your eyes
but secretly still enjoying
the circus, riding bikes
(no helmets back then;
stay tuned); reading
so much your parents
are worried. But it’s OK;
they shouldn’t.
Two things it will take
a lifetime to learn, and
when I tell you I’ll get
a funny look in return.
But here goes:
One, it will take you
a long time to learn
confidence, but you will
learn more that those
who always have it.
Two, you will be blessed
with never regretting
a decision, a choice,
because you will look
back and know you
wouldn’t have had it
any other way.
Bethany R. says
“rolling your eyes
but secretly still enjoying
the circus”
Love this, Glynn.
Samuel Smith says
To the Boy Behind Me
Young man, those denim overalls
grey as a weathered run of split-rail
won’t stay. But I should also add
that my hats always fray apart
along the brim, the same as yours.
My work behind and yours ahead,
we each look forward, backward, and
we find the other in between
our starting and continuing points.
Mine is the progress, yours the promise,
your years in front of you, stretching,
a long, grown-over row in spring,
a plow and spade. Take them in hand
and turn the ground for seed. Don’t wait.
Now is the time for planting, now
spring is the father of the fall.
Now you must wildly cast yourself
across the warm, black loam of life.
Do not regret some rashness, only
the timorous seeds left in the packet
becoming sterile waiting for
another season, or the hoe
leaning neglected on a fence,
its handle wearing down with rain
and not with any length of use.
L. L. Barkat says
I like this phrase both for its meaning and for the assonance between “rashness” and “packet” and the end-consonance between “rashness” and “timorous” and between “regret” “left” and “packet”:
“Do not regret some rashness, only
the timorous seeds left in the packet”
For similar reasons, I like this:
“Mine is the progress, yours the promise”
Maybe you didn’t do these things on purpose (I know sometimes mine are happy accidents!), but there they are. And they work so nicely 🙂
Samuel Smith says
Sort of half and half, I think. A few I rewrote for the sound, but the rest I saw and thought, “wow, that turned out well!”
Thanks!
Samuel Smith says
Great work last week, Monica. I don’t know how many times I’ve reread your poem, but each time I find something new. Definitely a keeper!