Crownhill, Plymouth 20.1.43 Dear Agnes (Gennie in future), Just a line to let you know...
Just a line to let you know the shocking type is still alive. I am sorry you couldn’t turn up at the station to see him off. It was really very selfish of him to suggest it. He would have left a poor defenceless Gennie in the dark in the city of Manchester.
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‘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.
‘One by one they’re led into the box. They swear their oath. They confirm their name, their employment, why they were where they say they were, what it was they saw.’
‘My hopes weren’t high, even to begin with, so I felt no bitterness when He didn’t reveal Himself’
‘When young, we were impatient with our parents: now we want to atone for our callowness, to take measure of them, to understand which parts of them live on in us.’
‘I'd already begun to suspect that sex brought misery or death, and now I knew.’
‘Skirtless, jumperless, she lies on the floor, her hair settling about her like a silky parachute.’
