From the Archives - Michael Daugherty

I'm sure I'm infringing some copyright here but it's only by way of some genuine hero worship.

The 1978 Kawabata Press booklet, Myths and Legends, by Michael Daugherty and George A. Moore reproduced Daugherty's poem Now.

It seemed then like the poem you could only wish to have written oneself and Daugherty, among these littlepress poets, was the superstar that one admired, like the George Best or Marilyn Monroe, someone that you could never hope to be.

Looking at it again now, I have to wonder if the 'death' at the end of line 9 isn't one of Colin's, the editor's, typos. I don't know but I wish I did.

It is still a tremendous poem and even though if I could have written it in 1978 it seemed as if doing so would have 'lasted me for the rest of my silent days', I now know that it wouldn't have.

Because whatever you've written, you're never happy with it. Even if someone adores what you did in a little magazine 30-odd years ago and is still prepared to say so, it doesn't make you happy enough. It wouldn't for me and I'm sure it doesn't for Michael Daugherty, even though his poem is carved forever on my memory.