Rick Barot: How a Poem Happens

As the diary entry says, I wrote the poem in a couple of hours. At that point, I was still writing everything on a typewriter: a beige electric Brother that hummed and clattered when I used it. What I remember of those two hours, from this far distance, is that I would write a stanza or two of the poem, then pace around the apartment for a spell, then go back to the typewriter and write another stanza or so, then do another round of pacing. I have a manila folder with the drafts, and there are in fact only a few drafts.