wildcat

Possibly, I am a monster, and this should in no way be seen as procrastination (this is a lie).

1. Frank O'Hara

Pictured here on the left with John Ashbury, who is an all-right bloke on his own but probably couldn't get away with argyle socks like Mister O'Hara over there. He's smoking hot. Also: "She wipes herself off and walks, smiling, back to her/ hotel. She is pale and the wind frees her hair,/ full of cries and smoke and bloody medicines. The/ lift is very old and open as it sags to her floor./ Inside her room she switches on the fan and wipes/ her wig off, dark, dark, the glamorous insurgence/ of pain and a feeling/ almost, of defeat." (from "Aggression.")

2. Anne Sexton

I mean, look at that! All poets should be required to have legs like that. This is how I imagine Joy will age. I looked about for that book of love poems I have by her but it seems to have gone missing. Probably ran off to Cancun with some torrid little Pablo Neruda number. And you know, the kiss: "My mouth blooms like a cut./ I've been wronged all year, tedious/ nights, nothing but rough elbows in them/ and delicate boxes calling crybaby/ crybaby, you fool!" (from "The Kiss.")

3. Arthur Rimbaud

Okay, admittedly he's rocking the "teen heartthrob" vibe a little too much and trying to, you know, out-James-Dean James Dean, except with fewer drag races and more gun-running, and I've pointedly avoided seeing the biopic they made way back with Leonardo DiCaprio so as not to contaminate my brain, but. But. But. "I should have my hell for anger, my hell for pride,-- and the hell of laziness; a symphony of hells." (from "A Season in Hell") What a drama queen.

4. Louise Glück

Wow! Just wow. Looking like that it'd be hard not to use a vanity shot for your book cover. The woman was, apparently, designed for author photos. The tinge of longing and sexful despair. That forehead. "Think of the body's loneliness./ At night pacing the sheared field,/ its shadow buckled tightly around./ Such a long journey./ And already the remote, trembling lights of the village/ not pausing for it as they scan the rows./ How far away they seem,/ the wooden doors, the bread and milk/ laid like weights upon the table." (from "The Garden")