About the inspiration for this poem, Pollitt writes:
The Garden of Eden -- a nice place to visit, perhaps, but would you have wanted to live there? Wouldn't it have been a little boring? No conflict, no surprise, no urgency, no change, no needs. In my poem, everyone is glad to be rid of Paradise, so timeless and static and perfect. Now, Adam and Eve will get to have complex, difficult relations full of blame and seduction, like real men and women; the animals will be real animals, alien beings in nature, not our toys and servants; and God, who exists outside of time, will enjoy himself watching human beings spin out their endless tragicomic story. As Milton says of his Adam and Eve at the end of "Paradise Lost," "The world was all before them."
Will they mess it up? Probably.
