Heir on Fire

"Heir on Fire" is the true story of why I destroyed all my poems at age fifteen when I didn't immediately rival Keats and Shelley. And, yes, I still blame them for the destruction of my lost poems!

Heir on Fire
by Michael R. Burch

I wanted to be Shelley’s heir,
Just fourteen years old, and consumed by desire.
Why wouldn’t my Muse play fair?

I went to work—pale, laden with care:
why wouldn’t the words do as I aspired,
when I wanted to Keats’s heir?

My "verse" seemed neither here nor there.
How the hell did Sappho tune her lyre?
And why wouldn’t my Muse play fair?

The journals laughed at my childish fare.
Had I bitten off more than eagles dare
when I wanted to be Byron’s heir?

My words lacked Rimbaud’s savoir faire.
My prospects were looking quite dire!
Why wouldn’t my Muse play fair?

At fifteen I committed my poems to the fire,
calling each goddess a liar.
I just wanted to be Shakespeare’s heir.
Why wouldn’t my Muse play fair?

I decided to become a “serious poet” at age fourteen. But competing with my heroes Shelley and Keats proved to be a formidable task. Harold Bloom wrote about the “anxiety of influence.” For me it was more like the “anxiety of not measuring up to my lofty expectations.” At age fifteen, in a fit of pique, I destroyed everything I had written. Fortunately, I was able to remember most of the destroyed poems and recreate them, but some were lost forever. It turned out that I wasn’t as bad as I had feared, because 74 of my teenage poems have been published by literary journals, which may be some sort of record. At least I had high standards!