Of the hundreds if not thousands of arts graduates, how many actually made it after graduation?

--How many had to go abroad in order to be branded a success?

--How many are simply bumming around while waiting for projects to arrive at their doorstep?

--How many ended up working in call centers?

--How many resorted to self-auctions, selling minor works online for a pittance to a general public?

--How many are selling plastic ware and hosting Tupperware parties to survive?

--How many became depressed and even suicidal?

It is fine to be an artist, but one also has to have a sense of economics, not only for oneself but also for one's community. After all, what kind of nation would this be if everyone were an arts graduate?

And, in the last analysis, it is real talent that counts, never the fact that one went to an academy.

Hello Mark,

Thank you for the nine sonnets you sent me for critiquing. I appreciated them more than the first poem you showed me the last time we were together in the coffee shop.

My comments:

--It is all right to explore and experiment with forms established by earlier poets from Europe, but, always have the objective of developing your own, unique style of writing that can separate you from the rest. It can be done. I am referring not only to Western sonnets but also to Filipino awits and koridos. 

--Try writing more loosely rather than constraining your work to fit rhyme and meter. Do look for a copy of the 1969 Penguin Modern Poets 13: Charles Bukowski, Philip Lamantia, Harold Norse. The works therein are timeless.

--You are very young; your poetic sensibility needs to mature, like wine. I could tell, from your lines, that there were instances when you were writing not from your own experience but from your visual observation of the world around you and from stories told by others. Poetry is condensed truth. Do not attempt to write about a night with a prostitute if you've never spent a night with a prostitute--that is an example I am using not from anything of the sort in your writing. In short, do not be a man writing about having an abortion because you can never have one in this lifetime. (The latter can be done, but only through a complicated process called regression, in which you visit, on the astral plane, a previous lifetime in which you were a woman who had an actual abortion. Let me attempt to do a regression on you sometime. Not many writers can do that, by the way.)

--Do keep on writing no matter what. It's the only way to get where you want to be.

--Further develop your powers of observation using ALL YOUR SENSES. Read through my blog on developing powers of observation; the exercises there apply not only to young psychics but also to artists and creative writers:

http://tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook19.blogspot.com/

I look forward to being with you again soon.

Write from your heart, never from your producer's or your publisher's cash register.

The artist who becomes truly immortal will always be the artist who takes pride in aging.

Always write for readers who are 30 years old and above. Your work then becomes truly timeless.

Draw a graph illustrating your journey of ups and downs over the 12 months of the previous year. Was your life on an upward trend?

Then draw a second graph illustrating your progress MINUS the emotions, and they will be two totally different graphs.