Date: 1953

"Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart / Or squash it flat?"

— Amis, Kingsley (1922-1995)

Date: December, 1954

"My mind, a vagrant, dreams on the shining Alps."

— Scott, Peter Dale (b. January 11, 1929)

Date: December, 1954

"Does Somebody look bored, / His thoughts vacant as plaster, with being year / After bleeding year, our immobile word?"

— Scott, Peter Dale (b. January 11, 1929)

Date: 1955, 1958

"It [the title of this book] is used out of context but expresses the way I felt about these poems when I wrote them---as if they were, taken together, a kind of Coney Island of the mind, a kind of circus of the soul."

— Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. (b. 1919)

Date: 1955, 1958

"It will be dark out there / with the Salvation Army Band. / And the mind its own illumination."

— Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. (b. 1919)

Date: 1959

"Look, the fixed stars, all just alike / as lack-land atoms split apart, / and the Republic summons Ike, / the mausoleum in her heart."

— Lowell, Robert (1917-1977)

Date: 1959

"And I believe in the spurred flame, / Those racing tongues, but cannot come / Out of my heart's unbroken room."

— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)

Date: 1959

"O quiet deed! / This is the breaking of the bread; / On this the leanest heart may feed / When by the stiffly-linened priest / All wounds of light are newly dressed, / Healed by the pouring-in of wine / From bitter — as from sweet — grapes bled."

— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)

Date: 1959

"And so my heart has ceased to breathe / (Though there God's worm blunted its head / And stayed.)"

— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)

Date: 1959

"The heart's tough shell is still to crack / When, spent of all its wine and bread, / Unwinkingly the altar lies / Wreathed in its sour breath, cold and dead, / A server has put out its eyes."

— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)