The 'Journal of Death Studies' for April2004 <br />(maybe you read it? It's in the <br />hospital library, top shelf <br />just out of wheelchair reach, <br />on the shelf labelled 'Reference') <br />observed that <br /> <br />nonfiction writers tend to die, factually, at sixty-eight; <br />novelists tie it all up at sixty-six; <br />playwrights lower the curtain at sixty-three, <br />and poets close their stanzas at sixty-two. <br />Well, thanks.. <br /> <br />six years - looking on the bright side - <br />for your favourite biographer to write you up; <br />four years for novelists to borrow <br />your untidy life and win the Booker Prize; <br />a year for playwrights to emulate <br />the bitter dialogue of your later, <br />less romantic household years <br />with less fear of being sued. <br /> <br />Those whom the gods love, die young, <br />said the optimistic poet <br />shortly before he died. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />for PoHo, who gave me the damn book with the reference in. <br />And yes, I wondered too..<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/write-yours-now/
