if one night I write what I consider to be 5 or 6 good poems then I begin to worry: suppose the house burns down? I'm not worried about the house I'm worried about those 5 or 6 poems burning up or an x-girlfriend getting in here while I'm away and stealing or destroying the poems. after writing 5 or 6 poems I am fairly drunk and I sit having a few more drinks while deciding where to hide the poems. sometimes I hide the poems while thinking about hiding them and when I decide to hide them I can't find them . . . then begins the search and the whole room is a mass of papers anyhow and I'm very clever at hiding poems perhaps more clever than I am at writing them. so then I find them have another drink hide them again forget it then go to sleep . . . to awaken in late morning to remember the poems and begin the search again . . . usually only a ten or fifteen minute period of agony to find them and read them and then not like them very much but you know after all that work all that drinking hiding searching finding I decide it's only fair to send them out as a record of my travail which if accepted will appear in a little magazine circulation between 100 and 750 a year-and one-half later maybe. it's worth it. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A GUY I KNOW ON 47TH AND COTTAGE by CLARENCE MAJOR TO CERTAIN JOURNEYMEN by CARL SANDBURG IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE by THOMAS HARDY THOSE VARIOUS SCALPELS by MARIANNE MOORE THE GRAVE OF LOVE by THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK MORAL ESSAYS: EPISTLE 2. TO A LADY: OF THE CHARACTERS OF WOMEN by ALEXANDER POPE |