A History of American Literature

The American Century: Literature since 1945 535

I’m writing this poem for someone to see when

I’m not looking. This is an open book.

(Karl Shapiro, “I’m writing this poem for someone to see”)

I am taking part in a great experiment –

whether writers can live peacefully in the suburbs

and not be bored to death.

(Louis Simpson, “Sacred Objects”)

I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender

into this world.

First came the crib

with its glacial bars.

(Anne Sexton, “Rowing”)

I’m Everett Leroi Jones, 30 yrs. Old.

A black nigger in the universe.

(Imamu Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), “Numbers, Letters”)

I must write for myself ...

I look at my face in the glass and see

a halfborn woman

(Adrienne Rich, “Upper Broadway”)

I haven’t read one book about

A book or memorised one plot.

Or found a mind I did not doubt.

I learned one date. And then forgot.

(W. D. Snodgrass, “April Inventory”)

I have no priest for now

Who

will forgive me then. Will you?

(John Logan, “Three Moves”)

I am busy tired mad lonely & old.

O this has been a long long night of wrest.

(John Berryman, “Damned”)

I am only thirty.

And like a cat I have nine times to die.

(Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus”)

I myself am hell,

• nobody’s here.
  (Robert Lowell, “Skunk Hour”)

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