There were no more Troys to burn

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939).  Responsibilities and Other Poems.  1916.

36. No Second Troy

WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?	5
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?	10
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

Dorothy Parker on Love

“I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”

 “And if my heart be scarred and burned,
The safer, I, for all I learned.”


“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”


“I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows I'm waiting here. He's so sure of me, so sure. I wonder why they hate you, as soon as they are sure of you.” 


“Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)”


“Lady, lady, never start
Conversation toward your heart;
Keep your pretty words serene;
Never murmur what you mean.
Show yourself, by word and look,
Swift and shallow as a brook.
Be as cool and quick to go
As a drop of April snow;
Be as delicate and gay
As a cherry flower in May.
Lady, lady, never speak
Of the tears that burn your cheek-
She will never win him, whose
Words had shown she feared to lose.
Be you wise and never sad,
You will get your lovely lad.
Never serious be, nor true,
And your wish will come to you-
And if that makes you happy, kid,
You'll be the first it ever did.” 


― Dorothy Parker

The Ballad of Tony the Tiger: A work in progress

I saw your eyes that tried to hide
behind façades of boyish charm
I knew you'd do me
some inchoate harm. But we played the game;
minor distraction from banal tragedy

You were like Achilles or Heracles
an epic hero battling a waterline
but the wrench was in the gears
even then
I pretended not
to see.

You came to me like a ball of fire;
I tried to run away, but couldn't.
Startled stock still
Mesmerized by the possibilities
in your eyes.

I exploded in your arms--
like a new sun--
Reborn.
Your fingers burned at the touch;
Scorched
you ran and ran and ran
from the heat
of that intensity.

Laughing, mocked by a cruel universe;
I dance alone in smoke and flame.

William Carlos Williams on Writing Poetry

William Carlos Williams
On poems as machines made out of words

---

To make two bold statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.

From: Williams's introduction to The Wedge, in Selected Essays of William Carlos Williams (NY: New Directions, 1969), p. 256.

Read the full article here.