I was warned about this book, that I’d be quoting from it. I’m not even far into it and I’m nodding and mmhmmming and all. I stopped and re-read this passage a couple times and it pertains to a lot of other discussions I’ve been in on over the years. You can substitute your own medium/passion/art/craft for poetry/poem/poet etc.

But perhaps you would argue that, since you want to be a contemporary poet, you do not want to be too much under the influence of what is old, attaching to the term the idea that old is old hat — out-of-date. You imagine you should surround yourself with the modern only. It is an error. The truly contemporary creative force is something that is built out of the past, but with a difference.

Most of what calls itself contemporary is built, whether it knows it or not, out of a desire to be liked. It is created in imitation of what already exists and is already admired. There is, in others words, nothing new about it. To be contemporary is to rise through the stack of the past, like the fire through the mountain. Only a heat so deeply and intelligently born can carry a new idea into the air. — Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook