Liana Richmond’s Reviews > The Writing Life: The Classic Essay Collection on the Creative Process > Status Update

One line of a poem, the poet said – only one line, but thank God for that one line – drops from the ceiling...and you tap in the others around it with a jeweler’s hammer. You find and finger a phrase at a time; you lay it down cautiously, as if with tongs, and wait suspended until the next one finds you: Ah yes, then this; and yes, praise be, then this."