Maybe I Should Take Up Painting Poem by Kim Barney

Ted Kooser was U. S. Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006.
The book is The Poetry Home Repair Manual. It's a great book.
Here are just a few thoughts from the book:

"In poetry, the ONLY rules worth thinking about are the standards of perfection you set for yourself. ...   
 ... think less about the reception of critics and more about the needs of readers. ...   
Any well-made poem is worth a whole lot more to the world than the person who wrote it.   ...   ... there's a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm.  While you're writing your poem, there's one less scoundrel in the world.   ...
 [quoting Seamus Heaney:   'The aim of the poet and the poetry is finally to be of service....' ]...
Though it can be a lovely experience to write a poem that pleases and delights its author, to write something that touches a reader is just about as good as it gets. ... 
We teach ourselves to write the kinds of poems we like to read.   ... 
There's nothing wrong with delighting in what you do.  In fact, most of the fun you'll have as a poet will come about during the process of writing.     ...  
 When something happens to catch your attention, and you feel like making a note of it, you can usually trust your impulse. ...  
It's through the process of writing that ideas and feelings emerge.  Let yourself play with whatever you observe.   ...  love playing with language.   
 ...  Revision, and I mean extensive revision, is the key to transforming a mediocre poem into a work that can touch and even alter a reader's heart. 
 ...   You can learn to love tinkering with drafts of poems, til a warm hand from somewhere above you reaches down, unscrews the top of your head, and drops in a solution that blows your ears off."