• "it's not just what you say – it's the way you say it"

    'Speak the speech, I pray you,...trippingly on the tongue' Hamlet Sc 2 Act 3.
  • "it's not just what you say – it's the way you say it"

    'Speak the speech, I pray you,...trippingly on the tongue' Hamlet Sc 2 Act 3.
  • Nov 11 1970
  • Dear Edmund
  • I had the curiosity (and impertinence) to see what made that first draft of your poem real, as you knew it was – Please forgive me
  • After ten drafts I got as follows:
  • In hollow shoes, long before dawn
  • (My heart swung loosely at my side,
  • I trudge a chill and glaring street
  • For I have no more left to hide.
  • And through this thud of hollow shoes
  • Comes booming back from high, dead walls
  • A newspaper, nudged by the wind,
  • Sneers at the pace my shadow crawls.
  • Whose was the fault, poor strangled heart,
  • That hung you here in a black bag?
  • Who hurled me from that bed of beds?
  • Why should those shoes clatter and drag?
  • Whose poem is it? Let's toss for it. See you I hope on Sunday.
  • Love to the Company –Robert