As with most things when decided upon at first—a beloved, a political cause, or, in my own case, the writing of poems—it’s easy to think all we have to do is start doing: show love, be politically alert, write poems. Maybe one of the chief values of enthusiasm is its ability to simultaneously energize us toward commitment and render us usefully—for the time—oblivious to the sheer stamina that sustained commitment, what we call a career, requires.
