Here again is Richard Wilbur. Well, I think that if you’re a soldier existing under combat conditions or threatened with combat conditions, you are going to feel rather disrupted. you’ll be disrupted by, fear and uncertainty. And this simply the strange ness of fighting a war and writing poems is a way, a small way of putting some of your life and mind in order.

I think that’s why I turned most seriously to, poetry at that time. I suppose it might also be said that if you’re sitting in a foxhole, as I was quite a bit at the time, and worrying a bit about what’s going on around you, writing a poem can have a marvelously insulating effect. It can take you out of the present harrowing scene and, allow you to to solve an emotional and intellectual puzzle with complete absorption.

Tags: On Writing