The Fading Smile

Robert Frost: "Robert Frost’s company was a classroom. His monologue drawled on for hours at a time, his open palm gesturing in the air like a conductor beating time, his extraordinarily expressive face, seamed with the channels of age, glowing with the amusement his words gave him, and his mind flickering into an entity that resembled something very like a poem."

Robert Lowell: "Robert Lowell’s unmistakable voice — weary, nasal, hesitant, whining, mumbling, a curiously hybrid blend of Yankee and Confederate intonations that descended from both family and literary sources — seems in retrospect to dominate the poetic harmony of the late 1950s in Boston."

Ted Hughes And Sylvia Plath: "Ted and Sylvia were invited to dinner, with a copy of the June Atlantic Monthly (containing poems by Adrienne Rich and myself) on the table, and the evening, I thought in my innocence, was cheery, full of laughter and Ted’s good humor. But Sylvia’s unpublished journal had other observations to make, based on other feelings."

Anne Sexton: "Sexton, who smoked continuously, struck a match and seared her hand with a fragment of phosphorus. For the next two hours her pain was a presence in the room: her hand was immersed in a plastic bag full of ice water, her ululations rose and fell. The guests tried to speak of other things, but it proved impossible: it was the pain that governed."

Stanley Kunitz: "Kunitz in those days seemed a little distant, with his European moustache, carrying his head with his prominent nose held high, and his lithe, almost athletic walk. He became, in his great old age, a better-looking man than in his middle years, as though the changes in his soul had tailored his body for a better fit."

Adrienne Rich: "Pixyish and charming, witty in person as her written work seldom is, she was clearly as glad as anyone to be admired, but she was holding something back. When I praised her work she looked at me quizzically, as though there were something she (or I) did not understand."