i'm somewhere in an ocean of lit and english masterpieces (some 800 of em) of nubile thirteen year-olds. but this dolorous tedium would often be anodyned by some amazing, very amazing, letters. like when asked to "write about an incident which happened and that had made you a very different person", one commences:

It was a time when no one cared ( Read more... )

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey eastward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark ( Read more... )

anton chekhov, five plays
boris pasternak, doctor zhivago
wallace stevens, the collected poems
elizabeth bishop, the complete poems 1927-1979
adrienne rich, poetry and prose
mark strand, selected poems
mark strand, dark harbor

i need one more bookshelf. my repressed and starved soul from ten weeks of juvenilia and atrocious handscrawls on tattered foolscap more or less exploded during the just-ended one-week september holidays.

james fenton, the strength of poetry: oxford lectures
mark strand, the weather of words: poetic invention
john ashbery, selected prosesamuel ( Read more... )

a bus bursting with students on its way to uni and not one reads a book. that's one of the what's wrongs of this depressing country.

Dear J ( Read more... )

We are incredibly fortunate to have so much culture and art happening over the summer here in the UK. It is at least some sanity in the midst of our lunatic Prime Minister Tony Blair wrecking yet more of the planet in the name of his inner conviction ( Read more... )

anyway, i keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, i mean - except me. and i'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. what i have to do, i have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - i mean if they're running and they don' ( Read more... )

i submit my eyes to the infinite darkness in fervent hope for a calming loop of light.
___

Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now ( Read more... )

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