At first the poem "The Cup" came in response to an assignment I gave myself:  try for 14 lines and a single domestic image.  Obviously I didn't make it!  But focusing on the cup let me channel the narrative drive of the poem.  Originally it was only about how the cup smashed, the pieces of the event all squashed into 14 lines.  Then Honor Moore said, "What kind of cup was it?" And Lynn Emanuel asked, "Didn't the woman have breakfast?"  As those poets, whose advice I value, posed questions, I received the letter of mourning I mention in the poem. (Yes, this is a poem based on things that really happened.)  It was in the thinking about the breakage of something minor (the cup) that the major crept in (the boy's death)—rescuing the poem, if not the little cup, or the fragile but bullying boy.  The force that really drove the lines was the state of shock that intruded on the calm, domestic image, not an assignment, after all.