I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
—
-Wallace Stevens
This is the fifth of Stevens’ famous “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and my favorite. Stevens knew how to break a line, didn’t he? Reminds me of sillage, the word for the scent a perfume leaves behind when the person wearing it has walked past.
“Every girl is expected to have caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama and doll tits.
The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes. Everyone else is struggling.”
My favorite book by a wide margin was An Imperial Affliction, but I didn’t like to tell people about it. Sometimes you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books, like An Imperial Affliction, that you can’t tell people about. Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”
—
Hazel Grace Lancaster, The Fault In Our Stars by John Green