I Suppose There's Something To Be Said

One May Prefer Spring And Summer To Autumn And Winter, But Preference Is Hardly To The Point. The Earth Turns, And We Live In The Grain Of Nature, Turning With It.

When Emily Dickinson's Poems Were Published In The 1890s, They Were A Best-seller; The First Book Of Her Poems Went Through Eleven Editions Of A Print Run Of About 400. So The First Print Run Out Of Boston For A First Book Of Poems Was 400 For A Country That Had Fifty Million People In It. Now A First Print Run For A First Book Is Maybe 2,000? So That's A Five-time Increase In The Expectation Of Readership. Probably The Audience Is Almost Exactly The Same Size As It Was In 1900, If You Just Took That One Example.

After A While I Understood That, Talking This Way, Everything Dissolves: Justice, Pine, Hair, Woman, You And I. There Was A Woman I Made Love To And I Remembered How, Holding Her Small Shoulders In My Hands Sometimes, I Felt A Violent Wonder At Her Presence Like A Thirst For Salt, For My Childhood River With Its Island Willows, Silly Music From The Pleasure Boat, Muddy Places Where We Caught The Little Orange-silver Fish Called Pumpkinseed. It Hardly Had To Do With Her. Longing, We Say, Because Desire Is Full Of Endless Distances.

What Simone Weil Said Politics Has Meant All Along, Which Means That You Fight For 11 Percent, 12 Percent, 13 Percent, That You Avoid Golden-age Thinking And Romantic Melancholy And You Just Keep Pushing.

In California In The Early Spring, There Are Pale Yellow Mornings, When The Mist Burns Slowly Into Day, The Air Stings Like Autumn, Clarifies Like Pain - Well, I Have Dreamed This Coast Myself.