Poets search tirelessly for their words--live lifetimes seeking them out. Visit Frost's cabin in Ripton, Vermont and you'll see evidence of that on his cabin's walls. Or read Frost's collected works and see the never-quite-there revisions in the back matter. Rosen said, "The poem is the point at which our strength gave out." I can't imagine Frost ever giving in.
I used to think I was a poet, and loved the idea of the life––shacked up in a small cabin on the shores of Lake Webb, white wine at midnight speaking the 44th revision of a poem about Weld. Some of those poems landed in regional publications and one even found a place in Indiana Writes and was anthologized... but now, thirty years later, I know that I didn't work long enough for those words. I might be able to now.
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