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.
Commentary
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’
http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/S744.htm
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
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Martin DeMello · 9 October 2002
“Why keep a journal? To stop time. To make a point about the pointlessness of it all. To have company. To be remembered. For there is so much to be recalled, with no one to do the recalling.”
– Ned Rorem
Lt Abhilash Tomy · 15 October 2005
i have a point to make here. does a man ever write for himself? ask yourselves. wud you rather not sit next to a wall and daydream? or dream about the distant past? is that not the better way of doing it? writing, in any form, is not for posterity. its not for yourself. its for an audience. you write because you want to be read. not to stop time in that moment. but that others may live your moments