Don't just write about yourself, but create characters and bring their voices to life! Avoid self-pity! Read the great poets of the past! Transform human life into poetry! Write tragedies and comedies in condensed form! Above all: do not strive for fame and publish nothing before the age of thirty! Virginia Woolf's letter to the young poet John Lehmann is a manual for modern poetry. As an experienced prose writer who ostensibly refrains from making any real judgment about poetry, she offers the seemingly desperate John sensitive, ironic, and very precise advice. This letter was first published in 1932 as the eighth volume of the "Hogarth Letters" in Woolf's own publishing house. The supposed recipient of the letter, John Lehmann, was the managing director there and had asked Virginia Woolf for a contribution on modern lyric poetry.