The Literary Life

“Daintiest curio

relic of Americana”
—Ted Hughes
“The Literary Life,”

Birthday Letters

I climbed Ariel’s—

Narrow dark staircase

To her Fitzroy Road—

Flat in London

To visit her—

Yeats' heirloom old dive

Her face was tense—

Blue from losing me

Her Voice a queer—

Quotidian garble

The ghostly gloom—

Arielesque forebodings

It was enough to—

Make me gasp for air

Inside her Bell Jar—

So helpless again

She wept and threw

Herself down the stairs

They picked her up, put—

Her back together again

Marianne Moore—

And Elizabeth Bishop

Lived downstairs in—

Their little Lesbian flat

So I didn’t stay—

For very long

Sylvia’s literary memoirs—

Already noir posthumous

I couldn’t help but—

Be glad it wasn’t me

American poets surely—

Should just watch TV