2004-02-12 - 10:52 a.m. I'm reading Kathleen Norris's The Virgin of Bennington, which, like all of Norris' memoirs, is warm, generous, clear-eyed, quietly funny...Here she's describing her college experience: sheltered, painfully shy girl enters radical, freewheeling envirnoment and finds that instead of becoming a part of that scene, she carves her own little cloister that allows her to enjoy the mess at a distance. Here's a Richard Hugo poem I've stolen from my friend Ann's site: from Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg Isn't this your life? That ancient kiss still burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeat so accurate, the church bell simply seems a pure announcement: ring and no one comes? Don't empty houses ring? Are magnesium and scorn sufficient to support a town, not just Philipsburg, but towns of towering blondes, good jazz, and booze the world will never let you have until the town you came from dies inside?
thoughts? (0 comments so far) previous - next
|