Daily Dose

From Wife of His Youth and Other Stories, by Charles W. Chesnutt

SHE SPOKE

"She spoke to them of the hopeful progress they had made, and praised them for their eager desire to learn. She told them of the serious duties of life, and of the use they should make of their acquirements.  With a prophetic finger she pointed them to the upward way which they must climb with patient feet to raise themselves out of the depths.

Then, an unusual thing with her, she spoke of herself."

From Cicely's Dream

Daily Dose

From The Fate of the Earth, by Jonathan Schell

THE QUESTION

"The question now before the human species, therefore, is whether life or death will prevail on the earth. This is not metaphorical language but a literal description of the present state of affairs."

From Chapter II, The Second Death

Daily Dose

From Boston Adventure, by Jean Stafford

MY ROOM

"The joy my room gave me was, each day when I switched on the lamp, so intense that my being required its articulation and sometimes I could not see the deep mole-colored carpet and the silvery draperies for my tears."

From Book Two, Pinckney Street, Chapter One

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #182

Daily Dose

From Complete Novels, by Jean Stafford

NEVER

"He had never seen her drink in the middle of the day before. He wondered if, all of a sudden, she was going to become fast and cut her hair and even dye it."

From The Catherine Wheel, Chapter III, The Sea's Souvenirs

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #175

Daily Dose

From What Kind of Day Did You Have?, by Saul Bellow

EVIDENTLY

"Evidently, whether he liked it or not, his was a common sexual type. He was beyond feeling the disgrace of its commonness."

From page 41, this edition

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #165

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #162

Daily Dose

From Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays, by Robert Frost

ACCEPTANCE

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night bee too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.' 

Daily Dose

From The Street, by Ann Petry

DESPITE

"Despite the lateness of the hour, groups of men were still standing in front of the Junto Bar and Grill, for the brilliant light streaming from its windows formed a barrier against the cold and the darkness in the rest of the street. Whenever the doors opened and closed, the light on the sidewalk was intensified. And because the men moved slightly, laughing and talking a little louder with each sudden increase in light, they had the appearance of moths fluttering about a gigantic candle flame."

From Chapter II

Daily Dose

From The Narrows, by Ann Petry

OUGHT NOT

"He supposed he ought not to look at this man who was walking about the room barefooted. But he couldn't help it. He had no corns on his feet, no bunions. His stomach didn't stick out, it was flat, absolutely flat; his waist was narrow and his shoulders were wide. The skin on his body was almost white, the forearms, and his face, tan by contrast. He made no sound as he walked, and Link thought, He's air-borne, light as air."

From Chapter 7

Daily Dose

From Collected Poems, by John Ashbery

POEM AT THE NEW YEAR

Once, out on the water in the clear, early nineteenth-century twilight, 
you asked time to suspend its flight. If wishes could beget more than sobs, 
that would be my wish for you, my darling, my angel. But other
principles prevail in this glum haven, don’t they? If that’s what it is.

Then the wind fell of its own accord.
We went out and saw that it had actually happened.
The season stood motionless, alert. How still the dropp was
on the burr I know not. I come all
packaged and serene, yet I keep losing things.

I wonder about Australia. Is it anything about Canada? 
Do pigeons flutter? Is there a strangeness there, to complete
the one in me? Or must I relearn my filing system? 
Can we trust others to indict us
who see us only in the evening rush hour, 
and never stop to think? O, I was so bright about you, 
my songbird, once. Now, cattails immolated 
in the frozen swamp are about all I have time for.
The days are so polarized. Yet time itself is off center.
At least that’s how it feels to me.

I know it as well as the streets in the map of my imagined
industrial city. But it has its own way of slipping past.
There was never any fullness that was going to be; 
you waited in line for things, and the stained light was
impenitent. ‘Spiky’ was one adjective that came to mind, 

yet for all its raised or lower levels I approach this canal.
Its time was right in winter. There was pipe smoke
in cafés, and outside the great ashen bird
streamed from lettered display windows, and waited
a little way off. Another chance. It never became a gesture. 

Clerihew of Canonization

BARBARA TUCHMAN

Barbara Tuchman
Often struck men
As just a lady amateur.
Well, now she's American literature!

Daily Dose

From Collected Writings, by Jane Bowles

WHEN

"'When I was a younger man I had a chance to go way down south to Florida,' he continued.  'I had an offer to join forces with with an alligator-farm project, but there was no security in alligators.'"

From Plain Pleasures

Daily Dose

From Collected Writings, by Jane Bowles

INTO

"I think it is very necessary to be able to get out of New York the minute you want to. More important than getting into it."

From a letter to Charles Henri Ford, dated Staten Island, Fall 1939

Daily Dose

From Collected Poems 1952 - 1993, by W. S. Merwin

SEPARATION

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Daily Dose

From Collected Writings, by Jane Bowles

SO LONG

"I haven't written anything in so long, that I'm afraid that I will forget how to use the typewriter, if this keeps up."

From Letters, #81

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #106

A Caricature