Author's Note by Hugh Cook
This was my first published poem (excluding some pieces which were published in high school yearbooks) and was published in a New Zealand magazine called NZ HOME JOURNAL. So, at least, my files tell me, though the date of publication has been lost. At a guess, this poem appeared back in 1973.
This is the kind of poem I would never write now, on principle: a poem about the writing of poetry. I want (now) to go out and engage the world. But this is now. That was then.
In retrospect, one of the problems of being a young poet is that it's easy to run out of subject matter. As I post this online in January of 2004, I'm a much older poet with a comparatively vast repository of experiences and thinking time.
I've read, in places, opinions saying that writing gets more difficult as you get older. But that's not my experience.
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