Friday, November 20, 2020

Throwing out the 4th draft of a 25 year old never published paper

 I think I'm in my 5th day of packing and pitching--my professional files (if you think I write a lot now, it's nothing like the 1990s), valentines from 3rd grade, letters to my parents, fiction and poetry I wrote in the 1990s. I can only do about 2 hours a day. Sad and disturbing. It's unbelievable what I've forgotten, but when I re-read those files, I don't want to throw away what I didn't know was stored in musty boxes. I have no recollection of applying for an exchange program to attend a Negro college in the south in 1958, but I told my parents about in a letter home from Manchester College.  And the next month there was a letter to them filled with my plans to attend the University of Illinois to study Russian.   And then. In a folder I found a photocopy of a poem written by Billy Collins (Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003) and published in Harper's Magazine, October, 1994. It's called simply, "Forgetfulness." I checked the internet and found a YouTube of his own performance. The audience was laughing.  I wasn't--it's a very sad poem.  

 https://youtu.be/aj25B8JYumQ   https://poets.org/poem/forgetfulness


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