Reading the review of Elizabeth Bishop's latest biography made me pretty ... sad for her, if that is the emotion. Indignant. The cruelties that can fill out a life are astonishing. And here's a poem about it, which I'll call the Abusers, even though 'abuse' strikes me as an abstract, euphemizing term for something as material as chewing. We know them now – some knew them then – Their hands so smooth, their zippers open Bishop’s Uncle George, Woolf’s step brother Gerald, In the dirty labyrinth of home, biography traces these Stravrogins, hangmen of the kid Whose limp body dangles under a lifetime’s lid Better, you say, that a rock were tied around their necks? But it never was. Wrecks produce wrecks While they smiled, serving dinner, above heaped plates Like some impenetrable masculine fate They stuck their knives into the shepherd pie Thinking themselves the boys that made the little girl cry.
“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads