@Ewalda: Now you’re talking. I had tea once with a woman (Cathleen Nesbitt) who was Rupert Graves’s lover. Remember that he died from blood poisoning in WWI. I was very young and so overwhelmed I could hardly speak. She was very old with hands deformed by arthritis but exquisitely elegant nonetheless.

Favorite poem?
See the happy moron,
He doesn’t give a damn.
I wish I was a moron -
My God! Perhaps I am.
Anonymous?

Or, this fine couplet:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.”
Philip Larkin

@JNOV: Sorry you’re not sleeping. It’s horrible, very depressing. I’d suggest reading Emily Dickinson but don’t want to seem flippant. Mind you, it works. At least I hope you got to sleep late.

Mad Girl’s Love Song
Sylvia Plath

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

Nowhere else. And I’m fighting the urge to add Sylvia Plath.

And that’s why I heart every one of you wacky-doodle stinquer cynics.

I love the poetry readings on Stinque.