Have you always wanted to be a writer? Have you stopped dreaming and started writing? This charming poem by Stephen Dobyns appeared in the April 9, 2012 issue of The New Yorker. It is about the dream of being a writer and having the determination to start writing.
Determination
~by Stephen Dobyns
Cabbage—the first word put down
with his new pen, a trophy pen,
like a trophy wife, not cheap,
absurd to use a ballpoint pen
for a task like this, a challenge,
for which he’d also bought a new,
but ancient, rolltop desk recently
restored, with matching chair,
also not cheap, and for which he’d
renovated the attic room with
pine-panelled walls, bookshelves,
and good light for his new office
or weekend office, a place planned
for many years, even before college,
back in high school in fact, a resolve
rare in his life, but about which
he’d dreamed in free moments
at his office, and which kept him
sane during those tedious years
of doing the taxes of strangers,
but now at last begun, excitingly
begun, as he leaned forward with
pen raised to put down on paper
the first word of his first novel.
