Category: hopelessness
Quotes of Category: hopelessness
To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving's to Truman Capote's, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation's literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan's salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge. book-quotesuicidehopelessnessmanhattanTheme
It's a sunny weekday in early May and after a ham sandwich
and a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace,
I am consumed by the wish to add something
to one of the ancient themes–
youth dancing with his eyes closed,
for example,
in the shadows of corruption and death,
or the rise and fall of illustrious men
strapped to the turning wheel of mischance and disaster.
There is a slight breeze,
just enough to bend
the yellow tulips on their stems,
but that hardly helps me
echo the longing for immortality
despite the roaring juggernaut of time,
or the painful motif
of Nature's cyclial return
versus man's blind rush to the grave.
I could loosen my shirt
and lie down in the soft grass,
sweet now after its first cutting,
but that would not produce
a record of the pursuit
of the moth of eternal beauty
or the despondency that attends
the eventual dribble
of the once gurgling fountain of creativity.
So, as far as great topics go,
that seems to leave only
the fall from exuberant maturity
into sudden, headlong decline–
a subject that fills me with silence
and leaves me with no choice
but to spend the rest of the day sniffing the jasmine vine
and surrendering to the ivory goverance
of the piano by picking out
with my index finger
the melody notes of "Easy to Love,"
a song in which Cole Porter expresses,
with put-on nonchalance,
the hopelessness of a love
brimming with desire
and a hunger for affection,
but met only and always with frosty disregard. book-quotelovehopelessnesspoetryFor several years Quinn had been having the same conversations with this man, whose name he did not know. Once, when he had been in the luncheonette, they had talked about baseball, and now, each time Quinn came in, they continued to talk about it. In the winter, the talk was of trades, predictions, memories. During the season, it was always the most recent game. They were both Mets fans, and the hopelessness of that passion had created a bond between them. book-quotehopelessnesssports
