Quotes: "Forget the epic, the masterwork ... you only have time to explode." Nathanael West

"In [my uncle Manny's] house ... something good was always coming up, and not just good but fantastic, transforming, triumphant ... his unpredictable manipulations of fact freed my mind to lope and skip among fantasies of my own, but always underneath was the river of his sadness." Arthur Miller

Carl Dennis,

The Man on My Porch Makes Me an Offer

"Above all houses in our town

I've always loved this blue one you own

With its round turret and big bay window.

Do you dream about it the way I do?

Wouldn't you be just as happy

On a street with more trees

In a larger house, whose columned porch

Impresses every passer-by?

Does it seem fair that you've won the right

To gaze from these windows your whole life

Merely because you saw them first,

And consign me to a life of envy?"

At Becky's Piano Recital
Maybe her patience this morning at the pond
Was another good sign,
The way she waited for the frog to croak again
So she could find its hiding place and admire it.
There it was, in the reeds, to any casual passerby
Only a fist-sized speckled stone.
All the way home she wondered out loud
What kind of enemies a frog must have
To make it live so hidden, so disguised.
Whatever enemies follow her when she's grown,