‘Sometimes it haunts you like a knell, sometimes it's the motto for unimagined privilege.’
I first encountered Ted Hughes as many of my age must have done, when I was a young teenager in the early Sixties being introduced in English lessons to those electric poems from The Hawk in the Rain and Lupercal. I still remember my English teacher reading out ‘Pike’. At that age either you get…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘The death of a father is, in most cases, an inevitable passage of life.’
‘Frank Randall had three sons: Michael, Eddy and Mark. That was fine by him‘.
‘Then he led me out into the noise and the glare and the stink.’
‘Sorting out the world! He should have sorted out himself and his own jeopardized household.’
‘The fact remains that when I did ask questions, I got the same response: genuine, not stimulated, ignorance. No one seemed to have heard of him.’
‘I don't think that’s such a hot idea. Resistance isn't for girls.’
