The woman next to me was astonishing in her stillness. She appeared perfectly composed, quiet, almost fixed in her concentration. She was softly pretty, her camel's hair coat slung over the back of her chair and a pile of books in front of her. Her notebook was open, her pencil poised. Everything seemed neat. This was Sylvia Plath.
Being born at all amounts to peering out from a cliff Over the sea. The great jellyfish who spread their arms Out on the sea tell us how deep our ignorance is.
Only three days later I realized the chalk outline was gone, faded, no doubt, in the rains that flushed the gutters clean, & now a steady line of haze
as the sun walks its beat. There were photographers, yes, a few nights back: flashbulbs burp [...]
The graveyard being what he called his face; even as a young man he called his face the graveyard—he talked like that, funny, odd things that scared me sometimes
in our early years—I thought maybe he was a little touched (his Uncle Bob was certi [...]
It is night. I feel it is night not because darkness has fallen (what do I care about darkness falling) but because down in myself the shouting has stopped, has given up.
I am chilly, nephew. I can smell the fire from the neighbor's home and hope to get its heat.
Don't say that flames have no odors, they do, nephew, but only the truly cold can understand.
Don't wander the marketplaces or stand before the stores. D [...]
You need something to tend that exacts a stately pace. You could set type, dice vegetables for soup, or knit a tiny sweater no faster than the baby
gestates for whom it's meant. Or translate Martial, scrubbing the rust from your Latin. Then you co [...]
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