back and forth all night
why didn’t anyone tell me there was more to edna st. vincent millay than that stupid ferry poem? my father handed me a slim volume, the kind with friendly, uneven pages that are tinted old, when i went to college, but he didn’t mention that what was inside would be even more attractive. conversations at midnight is a long narrative poem/play. a group of varied men sit in a room in 1937 and dialogue about politics, women, life, and each other. the most heated exchange comes between carl, a communist poet, and merton, a conservative stock-broker; but although you, as reader, might lose the subtle rhyme in concentrating on the ideas, she, as author, never does.
i’m accumulating lit for the summer. already on hand i have david “hot damn i’m funny … and hot!” sedaris’s naked, fran “now that you know my name, you’re seeing it everywhere” lebowitz’s metropolitan life and “that book that everyone but me has already read and loved” bee season. my hope is that the 1st two will help prepare me for / steer me through new york. and the third will just be comfort food.
it’s sobering to come across something like conversations at midnight, though; something that reminds how much of value there is that you’ve already dismissed, or not heard about, or forgotten. being a capitalist myself, at least for the time being, i want more.