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...FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT by CHARLES WILLIAM SHIRLEY BROOKS THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING THE PAINS OF SLEEP by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE THE BOOK [OF THE WORLD] by WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER by JOHN KEATS THE BIGLOW PAPERS: 3. WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL |