Because the self is fragmentary but indivisible, because how you do every littlest thing — how you write, how you love, how you do the dishes — is a fractal of how you live, any true wisdom on the particular reverberates with wisdom on life itself.

Four years before her untimely death, poet Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947–April 22, 1995) delivered a lecture at a literary conference, later published under the heading Everything I Know About Writing Poetry in her posthumous collection A Hundred White Daffodils: Essays, Interviews, The Akhmatova Translations, Newspaper Columns, and One Poem (public library).

Although her advice is aimed at poets, at its heart is tremendous wisdom that applies to every field of creative endeavor, equal parts consolation and affirmation to any artist. Spoken with the unassuming honesty of her own experience as a working poet with decades of trial and triumph under her belt, Kenyon’s counsel comes as an offering of love:

Tell the whole truth. Don’t be lazy, don’t be afraid. Close the critic out when you are drafting something new. Take chances in the interest of clarity of emotion.

The closing passage contains some of the most ennobling tenets for a human being to live by:

Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.

Complement this particular portion of the wholly wonderful A Hundred White Daffodils with psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on the vitality of “fertile solitude,” Thoreau on the spiritual rewards of walking, and Mary Ruefle on the nourishment of good books, then revisit Kenyon’s husband, the poet Donald Hall, on the secret to lasting love.