homework advice

Side note: to anyone who thinks
it's better not for one's life's heart's work
to be assigned, for anyone who thinks
it's better not to set targets, but
rather one should just let flow
whenever you feel like it; to anyone who worries
the quality of art might suffer
because you "forced it,"

proof's in the pudding my friends.
#1 a work done wrong once
can be done right again, once
it's done once at all. And you can take that
gem from the bank, in the rough
- now that it's been found, mined, now
that it exists, it has weight in the hand
- later on, you can return to it again; it
can be polished, refined, recast and re-set -
and perhaps a new and fantastic work
will be the result you get. And yet,
you never would have had the first
raw chance to make a thing of it, if
you hadn't gotten off your ass
and made yourself
make a thing.

You can't argue
with results like those, for
what you do today in no way constrains,
prevents, or uses up

what you can do tomorrow.

Only what you fail to do today constrains.
Prevents, uses up what you will no longer later
be capable of. So,

Not advice, perhaps.

It's a god-damn harangue. Class,

Please open your books
to page one.