rather late for me

i will tell you a secret- i create by curating*. so here is more smartness from other people. updike tells us that wordsworth's prescription for poetry is, "fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation."

Annus Mirabilis
.phillip larkin.

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban.
And the Beatles' first LP.

*and collage.

the first issue in my new new yorker subscription has arrived. i've learned a bit but i must say it makes me a bit queasy knowing that ineveitably a slipshod pile will form in the little space between my sony boombox and the painted white legs of the table nazli and i bought at the fleamarket and i will feel torn between catching up on articles i'm vaguely interested in having finished all pieces by judith thurman and louis menand or finishing zuleika dobson or knitting my hippopotamus' shawl while watching the second season of six feet under on dvd. sigh...if only the demi monde on long island were less demanding- i might have time to do it all.

while i'm on top of my reading i will share with you some bits:

from adam gopnik's commentary on nyc bicycle taxi: "It even evokes new metaphors. For instance, the thing about George W. Bush is not that he was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. It is that he has been in a bicycle taxi all his life but he has not yet bothered to notice that someone else is pedalling."

and from burkhard bilger's piece on nerd camp: "The teacher, a baby-faced Georgetown graduate student named Bill McGeehan...told me later that he had never taught such students before. 'In terms of seriousness, in terms of rate of comprehension, it is beyond belief how much better they are than the average class at Georgetown.'"