The Useless Critic 2.0

So I don't know if Al is doing spotlight anymore, but I am doing my poetry thing, so here it goes. I am currently reading Savage Beauty , the biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, celebrated early 20 th century American poet, Vassar grad and idol of Cara (hi). I first became aware of this book when we were flying either to or from Phoenix and I stole it from Cara while she slept and read like half a chapter. What an interesting, colorful life this woman left! And the biographer previously wrote about crazy bitch/ pre -Courtney Love Zelda Fitzgerald, so you know she has experience in this area. RIP Zelda. I found it again last week on one of my trips to the library and now am reading it and it is huge and also interesting. But it's really big. Like dictionary big. This woman was so big during her lifetime she used to give regular radio readings of her work on a weekly basis. People used to crowd to see her speak. She was a role model for young women, seriously. Can you imagine...

In the second section of the first volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time , “Swann in Love,” when Charles Swann is insisting Odette tell him of her other suspected lovers, his line of reasoning of needing to know follows that he’ll stop bothering her about it so often because being able to picture a thing, to bring it out of the unknown, brings him a sense of relief. “The truly horrifying things,” he continues, “are the ones you can’t imagine.” Early 20th century American poet, Edna Millay, disagrees. As she wrote in “The Unexplorer”— There was a road ran past our house Too lovely to explore. I asked my mother once — she said That if you followed where it led It brought you to the milk-man’s door. (That’s why I have not traveled more.) — Subsequently, it was the mystery of a small dirt road which always had the three year-old version of myself always wanting to walk down it despite never having the confidence of asking my father to take me, and losing the opportunity altogeth...