Tim Callicutt’s Reviews > The Lily in the Valley > Status Update

“Perhaps we are stirred neither for good or evil. Restless organpipes echo within us a void; oppressive games in which our power slips away unnourished, like blood seeping from an unknown wound.”

Thus saith a man driven entirely by his passions. But there is some truth in this for all of us.

“Fallen from the blue steppes where I had admired it, my precious star had turned into a woman, who retained its brightness, glitter, and freshness. Totally ignorant of love, I found that I was suddenly in love. Isn’t the first eruption of man’s fiercest sentiment the strangest thing?”

Fiercest is right. I wasn’t expecting such active (and weird) descriptions of his muse in this era.

“What poet will sing of the sorrow of a babe whose lips suck on a sour breast, whose smiles are crushed by a harsh glint in a cruel eye?”