Baudelaire: ‘The dead, the poor d… But the dead have no watches, no g… At first not smoking took all my t… a little by little and hour by hou… Per diem. Pro bono. Cui bono? Pr…

the only parts of the body the sam… size at birth as they’ll always be… ‘That’s why all babies are beautif… Thurber used to say as he grew blind—not dark, he’d go on

I read to the entire plebe class, in two batches. Twice the hall fil… with bodies dressed alike, each to… a copy of my book. What would my shrink say, if I had one, about

The lump of coal my parents teased I’d find in my Christmas stocking turned out each year to be an oran… for I was their sunshine. Now I have one C. gave me,

Usually I stay up late, my time alone. Tonight at 9o I can tell I’m only awake long enough to put my sons to bed. When I start to turn off lights

Stains on the casements, dustmotes, spiderless webs. No chairs, and a man waking up, or he’s falling asleep Many first novels begin

So here the great man stood, fermenting malice and poems we have to be nearly as fierce against ourselves as he not to misread by their disguises.

Here we picked wild strawberries, though in my memory we’re neither… nor missing. Or I’d scuff out by myself at dusk, proud to be lonely. Now everything’s

February on the narrow beach, 3o A.M. I set out south. Cape Cod… on its crumbling cliff above me tu… its wand of light so steadily it might be tolling a half-life,

A snake is the love of a thumb and forefinger. Other times, an arm that has swallowed a bicep. The air behind this one

Most of the time he worked, a sort… with a purpose, so far as I could… How he got from the dark of sleep to the dark of waking up I’ll neve… the lax sprawl sleep allowed him

for Paul Levitt Be perpendicular… toes avid for the line. Already this description is perilously abstract: the ball and basket are round, the nailhead

I like divorce. I love to compose letters of resignation; now and th… I send one in and leave in a lemon… hued Huff or a Snit with four on… Do you like the scent of a hollyho…

Walking with Jesus the slow, behind the beat. Mr. Resistance. Mr. Ohm, Mr. Exactly Lame. By some reluctance, some restraint, if it be a restraint,

I was miserable, of course, for I… and so I swung into action and wro… and it was miserable, for that was… poetry worked: you digested experi… literature. It was 1960 at The S…