Each morning now, working on poetry before I get to Life Work, I redraft “Another Elegy?" It takes me many drafts to write a poem and "Another Elegy" is the all-time statistical leader. When I take questions after a poetry reading, or talk to student poets, I emphasize how hard I work and how many drafts I number. (A few weeks ago I talked in Chicago. My host in a recent letter quoted a student: "I was amazed about his overdrafts.") Seldom do I mention "Another Elegy," because its numbers are ridiculous. Some finished, poems get over a year or two, in twenty-five or thirty drafts; more likely fifty or sixty; several by actual count go over a hundred-but “Another Elegy," which began in 1982, had accumulatedwhen I put it away in 1988, furious with it, ashamed and humiliated by failure-over five hundred drafts. At some point in 1990 this poem began to nibble at my consciousness again. I had put it away but I hadn’t destroyed it, and I began to consider a fundamental alteration in the way the poem presented itself. For a year I refused its entreaties, would not look at it; then on January 1, 1992, with the deepest of sighs, I pulled it out of the drawer. It looked good to me, and immediately I began radical revision; deep hopelessness seesawed to elevations of high hope. After ten more weeks and thirty more drafts I showed the new poem to Jane who remembered the | old one; her response encouraged me.
— Donald Hall, Life Work