Birthday
Beloved dog, in from the wet
Reeking of earth, licking my face like a flame,
Your red-brown coat and glowing eyes
Clearer than anything in human nature
Tell me I will live another year.
— James Merrill (1974)
The Net
Toward evening the wind changes. Boats
still out on the bay
head for shore. A man with one arm
sits on the keel of a rotting-away
vessel, working on a glimmering net.
He raises his eyes. Pulls at something
with his teeth, and bites hard.
I go past without a word.
Reduced to confusion
by the variableness of this weather,
the importunities of my heart. I keep
going. When I turn back to look
I'm far enough away
to see that man caught in a net.
— Raymond Carver (1987)
With No One –
With no one
can our innermost
thoughts
be shared.
With what is
most important
in the world
we are alone.
It is a
lasting burden
it is a
subtle joy
that here no one
can reach you
and no one
can be let in.
— Tove Ditlevsen (1969)
trans. Cynthia Graae and Michael Favala Goldman
Fuck the average reader
Fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.
— David Simon