Writing -- William Allingham

(Poem #737) Writing A man who keeps a diary, pays Due toll to many tedious days; But life becomes eventful--then His busy hand forgets the pen. Most books, indeed, are records less Of fulness than of emptiness. -- William Allingham

Not a poem that needs a whole lot said about it - I liked the idea, and I
liked the way Allingham expressed it in verse. There's also a wonderful
irony underlying most works that write, disparagingly, of writing itself -
'Writing' doesn't quite qualify, since it is a poem about diarists, rather
than about poets, but there is nonetheless an echo of that irony in the way
the last two lines are phrased, and more than an echo of self-mockery when
we learn that Allingham himself was a well-known diarist. Illustrative is
another of his quotes: "Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly
every day."

Biography:

  Allingham, William

  poet, civil servant
  great-britain
  1824, Ballyshannon (Ireland) - 18 Nov 1889, London

  Son of a banker. He was a civil servant, but actively sought literary
  acquaintances. On June 27th, 1847 he met Leigh Hunt for the first time and
  he came to write wrote for Leigh Hunt's London Journal. Hunt introduced
  him to Thomas Carlyle and he was also part of the Rossetti circle. Between
  1850 and 1857 he wrote a dozen volumes of poetry. In 1864 he visited the
  Shelleys in Bournemouth.

        -- http://www.xs4all.nl/~androom/biography/p003823.htm

Links:

Here's an excerpt from 'William Allingham: A Diary'
  [broken link] http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/S744.htm

[broken link] http://www.opengate.demon.co.uk/frame31177.html contains a review of the
diary and some more biographical material

Compare Nicanor Parra on the subject of writing: poem #190

-martin