The Ivy League is a short haircut. The sides and back are buzzed, and the top is just long enough to comb. It makes Kenny look like the boy in the school portraits his mother props on the mantle. Also like some California surfer our friend Missy fell in love with. Lately, Kenny’s been going…
Chelsea, Massachusetts “Mrs. López refuses to pay rent, and we want her out,” the landlord’s lawyer said, tugging at his law school ring. The judge called for an interpreter, but all the interpreters were gone, trafficking in Spanish at the criminal session on the second floor. A volunteer stood up in the gallery. Mrs….
My friend says yes to this, yes to that, Lies in bed all day saying answers, His life reduced each hour to this: water, Paper-thin sheath of flesh, various cancers That he allows, even befriends. Some of us will die of greedier Diseases, some by their own skeletal hands. …
James Carroll: An American Requiem. A stirring, generational memoir about Carroll’s many lives as the son of an Air Force general, a priest, civil rights and antiwar activist, novelist, husband, and father. (Houghton Mifflin)
At night the wind sometimes woke him as it sliced across the tin roof of the cabin, and he would open his eyes in darkness to find his hands gripping the bedframe. Thirty-five knots, forty knots-it was impossible not to gauge the speed of the gusts in his mind. He felt, too, the chastened shudder…
Two kinds of sand. One heavy, gritty, That falters moodily under your toes, like custard; The other, shiny weedy ribs, and further, Out of sight, the standstill sea. You tramp along In sunbonnet and spade, summer’s regalia. You choose a gray snake’s nest, slice into it, And yes, there are lugworms, and you…
The splendid coat that wrapped the favored son In fevered dreams of adulation And turned his brothers’ hearts from jealousy To rage (Behold, this dreamer comes)—though long Since rent and soaked in blood, dried and decomposed— Arrives through the long centuries over Sea and land, the unexpected birthright Of this particular girl. Its separate Magic…
Donald Hall: The Old Life. An autobiography in verse by the venerable, witty, and always edifying poet and essayist. (Houghton Mifflin)
She had strong views on Mrs. Humphry Ward, The Brontës, poor souls, women called George, Novelists known as A Lady. There was always An edginess. Whenever we went too far, Children or parent, she’d flare Oh you Fanthorpes! As if at some foreign breed. She lost some magic when she married us….
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