Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. The country is grey and brown and white in trees, snows and skies of laughter always diminishing, less funny not just darker, not just grey. It may be the coldest day of the year, what does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again.

I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry - all of the past you read is usually quite great - but it is a useful thorn to have in one's side.

Mothers of America / let your kids go to the movies!

That's not a run in your stocking, it's a hand on your leg.

I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.

There were occasionally rifts in the cloud where the face of a woman appeared, frowning.

It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.