Archive for March, 2009

"The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed."

                                                      — Sylvia Plath, "Insomniac"

I was in the library stacks looking for something else and came across a booklet of Plath’s "Uncollected Poems" published in an edition of 150 by Turret Books in 1965. It’s a neat little thing with a pink centerfold page that reproduces an early, handwritten draft of the poem "Thalidomide." Still recovering from my spring break flu, I decided to relax with the chap this evening, and came across this freshly-relevant gem. :-)

"I know that I braid too much my own
Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me.
They are private and always will be.
Where then are the private turns of event
Destined to boom later like gold chimes
Released over a city from a highest tower?
The quirky things that happen to me, and I tell you,
And you instantly know what I mean?"

          — John Ashbery,  from "The One Thing That Can Save America"