Here’s the scene: a handful of New York high-schoolers, an English teacher with good instincts, and one famously cranky, famously kind author in his eighties who claimed he now looked “like an iguana.” The kids wrote persuasive letters to their favorite living writers, inviting them to visit their class. Most authors did what grown-ups usually do: nothing. Kurt Vonnegut did what artists do at their best—he answered, and he taught, without even showing up.

The letter, dated November 5, 2006, is a time capsule of tenderness and mischief from a man who didn’t have to bother. He was the only one to reply, and his words still circle the internet because they land like a hand on the shoulder: “Make your soul grow.”

Let’s rewind for a moment. Who was Kurt Vonnegut, the man behind this unforgettable letter?

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) was the Midwestern master of sharp humor and human decency. Born in Indianapolis, he survived World War II and the firebombing of Dresden, which became the backbone of his breakout novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Throughout his career, he wrote classics like Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, blending satire, science fiction strangeness, and social commentary that still stings today. He died at 84, leaving behind work that continues to sell, irritate the right people, and console the rest of us.

If you asked him about awards or bestseller lists, though, he’d probably wave them off and say: The point isn’t the trophy case. The point is to make something.

The Assignment

Vonnegut’s “homework” was as weird and wonderful as the man himself:

• Write a six-line rhymed poem. No fair tennis without a net.
• Make it as good as you can.
• Show it to no one.
• Rip it into teeny-weeny pieces.
• Scatter them in different trash cans.

He even misspelled “receptacles” as “recepticals”, the kind of slip that makes him feel more human.

No Fair Tennis Without a Net

That phrase is sneakily brilliant. Sure, you can hit a ball back and forth without a net, but it’s not tennis. The net gives the game its meaning. For Vonnegut, the rhyme requirement was the net. Constraints force you to stretch, to solve problems, actually to wrestle with the act of creation. That’s where the growth happens.

As a former English teacher, I recognize that move. It’s basically classroom theater, the oddball stunt that sticks in your brain way longer than a rubric ever could. The tearing is the lesson. Forget grades. One weird ritual will outlive a semester’s worth of bullet points on the smartboard.

Vonnegut was daring those kids to step off the hamster wheel and into a moment of pure making. The kind that makes your brain sweat a little, in a good way, and wakes up the part of you that actually pays attention.

In a culture that treats privacy like contraband, Vonnegut’s assignment told students to create something that was theirs alone. No audience, no applause, no grade. Just six lines of effort for the sake of making. And because it’s Vonnegut, he didn’t package it as a lecture. He slipped the wisdom in with a grin, the kind of offhand joke that sticks longer than any inspirational poster ever could.

His bigger point: don’t wait for perfect conditions, perfect mentors, or perfect faces. Practice any art, “music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage”, not for money or fame, but “to experience becoming.”

But why write something just to destroy it?  This was the part that initially stumped me. What’s the point of pouring effort into a poem only to shred it into confetti?

From a student’s perspective: Wait, I just did my homework and now I get to tear it up? Best assignment ever. It’s pure fun, permission to play without worrying about being called on to read it aloud.

From a teacher’s perspective: Ah, clever. He’s removing the audience. No judgment, no grades, no “good enough.” Just the act of writing. That lesson will outlast any red-ink correction.

From an artist’s perspective: this is the purest form of making. No approval, no paycheck, no likes, no retweets. You create, you destroy, and you walk away different than when you started. The poem is gone, but you’re not the same person who sat down to write it. That’s the reward.

It’s not about refusing to share forever; it’s about breaking the habit of doing things only for applause. Tearing it up clears the stage so you can enjoy the simple buzz of, “Hey, I made a thing.”

The Challenge

I’m going to take Vonnegut up on his dare. If he believed a six-line poem torn into confetti could stretch the soul, then I want to find out for myself. Will I feel different afterward? Will it spark that “artist” nerve he swore we all have? Sounds ridiculous, but I’m game. The question is: are you?

Here are the rules: Six lines. Rhymed. No witnesses. Tear, scatter, done.

Optional, but worth it: write a quick four-sentence reflection, not about the poem, but about the experience.

Here are a few prompts to get you thinking:

1. What surprised you about yourself while writing?
2. Did the rhyme scheme feel like a cage or a trampoline?
3. Where did you hit resistance, and how did you push past it?
4. What did tearing it up feel like: relief, silliness, freedom, frustration?

Write your reflection and keep it. Or don’t. The important part is noticing what happened in you, not in the poem.

Vonnegut’s little homework is an antidote to the dopamine economy. There’s a whiff of harmless vandalism in scattering scraps of poetry across trash bins, and that mischief makes the memory stick. That silly ritual might be the spark that keeps you creating long after you thought you were done.

So here’s to the iguana who mailed back. Not because he had to. But because this is what artists do when they care more about the next generation than the next headline: they hand over a tiny, odd ritual that can power a lifetime.

Write. Rip. Walk away grinning. The poem is gone. The maker remains.

Here’s the link to the letter: https://www.highexistence.com/make-your-soul-grow-84-year-old-kurt-vonneguts-wonderful-letter-to-a-group-of-high-school-students/