Keats was dead at 25, Shelley at 29, Dylan Thomas at  39, Sylvia Plath at 30. Chatterton didn’t even make it to 18.

Well, now. Until Saturday I would have said (nay, shouted) NO!

Ah yes, well. Please buy some HappenStance pamphlets. You know you want them. Sigh.

I woke up thinking about a poem. For some reason, it isn’t well known, though I can’t think why not.

Poets should only be allowed to publish as many poems as they can learn by heart.

I teach loads of adult students who loathe poetry. Sometimes I hate it more than they do. I look at books of it piling up around me and I feel sick. I feel like the miller’s daughter locked in a room of straw without the faintest hope of Rumpelstiltskin.