While poetry was less professionalized than it is now, I still had this urge to win prizes and see my work in magazines, to get an "A," as though poetry could be graded. I wish I had been more patient and less frantic about getting published.
As a child, a person builds up an egoic sense - the child has a name, has an "I," has a mind. But then, to awaken, a person needs to completely transcend that sense of ego.