Last week Stephanie Barber returned to Baltimore from The Poor Farm, an arts outpost in Waupaca, WI, where she spent more than sixty hours writing a four-line poem. How long do 4-liners take you? I can usually write a pretty good one in minutes. But Stephanie Barber worked on her four lines all day, every day for a week, taking no breaks. This is what she wrote:

Its hooves were mouse and fire
And it was angry and into counting
Also it was starstruck
Like a complicated Mexican companion cat

It’s nice — lovely, really — but what took so long? Well, whereas I write with a pen, Barber composed this poem with . . . READ MORE >