Fifteen years ago, sitting at the Tippecanoe County Public Library with an anthology on the table in front of me, poetry asked me to take it seriously. A lead apron of student loans seemed necessary.

In pursuing poetry, I’ve worked as a bricklayer and a line cook. I’ve tutored rich kids, played the banjo for 20 bucks a gig, baked bread, washed dishes for minimum wage. I’ve written “content” for money. I’ve overdrawn my account buying white bread and cigarettes. I’ve studied, I’ve written, I’ve earned degrees. I’ve been lucky. The collection calls still come in the morning.

So, when I’m diligent, do the poems. My hands caught in some grease trap or cement mixer, I thought of poems it seemed unlikely anyone would ever read, or take as seriously as I did. I went to the classes the loans afforded and tried to read the French philosophy, writing poems instead of notes in my notebooks. Someone in the desk next to me said, “What smells like onions?” And it was me, straight off breakfast shift.

Give into the smell, the smell would say.

This National Endowment for the Arts fellowship gives me the ability to pay off those student loans, to quiet the anxiety of the smell, for a moment. Submitting manuscripts, applying for opportunities—this all costs money and time, and poetry has always privileged a certain class. I will be forever grateful to the NEA—and its free application process—who does this essential work, providing the opportunity for writers across the spectrum of class privilege to be taken as seriously as they take themselves.