But the life of a Willa Cather, a Lillian Helman, and Virginia Woolf - - - would it not be a series of rapid ascents and probing descents into shades and meanings — into more people, ideas and concept...
I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers.
I talk to God but the sky is empty.
Out of the ash I rise with my red hairand I eat men like air.
I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.
After all, I wasn't crippled in any way, I just studied too hard, I didn't know when to stop.
Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call.
LADY LAZARUSI have done it again.One year in every tenI manage it--A sort of walking miracle, my skinBright as a Nazi lampshade,My right footA paperweight,My face a featureless, fineJew linen.Peel off...
Is anyone anywhere happy?
I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.
I have room in me for love, and for ever so many little lives.
I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad.
It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative - whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.
I have stitched life into me like a rare organ
Brave love, dream
They might ignore me immediately. In my moon suit and funeral veil. I am no source of honeySo why should they turn on me?Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.
I'm so jealous I can't speak.
I cry at everything. Simply to spite myself and embarrass myself.
I am too pure for you or anyone.From the poem Fever 103°, 20 October 1962
I have felt great advances in my poetry, the main one being a growing victory over word nuances and a superfluity of adjectives.