I brought it to my poetry workshop in far shorter form, had not contemplated the Zero, etc. Since I'd brought it in pretty much as a lark I hadn't fully grasped what could be done with the notion. I got some excellent criticism as well as their desire that I do much more work and flesh the notion out. About two dozen drafts later I brought it back and was urged to fine tune it as well as attempt uniformity of length of line, etc. in each stanza. I completed it to my own (and their) satisfaction, but still believe (as I do with most of my poetry and prose) that if I just kept at it I would make it perfect. But that's always been a lost cause, as I learned when I was a publisher.

I was the founder and CEO of Plenum Publishing Corporation which I had begun in 1947 with $100, and wound up with a multimillion dollar company on Nasdaq. One of the lessons I learned was that perfection is unavailable. The trick is to persist in attempting to make a fine product knowing it will not be perfect but will not shame you and will bring to the buyer as much or more than he/she might have expected. And then live with that, knowing it's not perfect.

Because I traveled a great deal as a publisher, and because my tastes and knowledge are eclectic I write about a large variety of subjects, with my own idiosyncratic take on all of them, of course. That's another lesson I learned while learning to become a publisher—when you're poor and at the beginning of things and you have the energy and desire to perform in a larger sphere then you have no choice to but to be an original thinker and take little for granted, learn rules, but know when they need to be broken or new rules invented.