Date: 1935

"Not I, to whom the scraggly, unpruned emotions of many modern poets seem almost indecenly luxurious."

— North, Jessica Nelson (1891-1988)

Date: w. 1936, 1938

"The year plunges into night / and the heart plunges / lower than night // to an empty, windswept place / without sun, stars or moon / but a peculiar light as of thought // that spins a dark fire-- / whirling upon itself until, / in the cold, it kindles // to make a man aware of nothing / that he...

— Williams, William Carlos (1883-1963)

Date: 1936

"Everything is sordid, shoddy, thin as pasteboard. A Coney Island of the mind."

— Miller, Henry (1891-1980)

Date: 1936

"The monarch of the mind is a monkey wrench."

— Miller, Henry (1891-1980)

Date: 1936

"The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews."

— Auden, W. H. (1907-1973)

Date: 1936

"Lids closed, the eyes are watchful; the brain / carefully stalks the thought like a tiger / following the accurately-scented prey / through tangled jungle foliage."

— Edwin Rolfe (1909-1954)

Date: 1936

"The way / to certainty is charted now, / the sensitive ears alive to sound, / antennae poised for touch, and in the head / all tissue quivering like violin strings."

— Edwin Rolfe (1909-1954)

Date: 1937

"Figure on her waxen mind / Images of life refin'd."

— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)

Date: 1937

"Make [her mind], as a garden gay, / Every bud of thought display, / Till, improving year by year, / The whole culture shall appear,"

— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)

Date: 1942

"It has to be on that stage / And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and / With meditation, speak words that in the ear, / In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, / Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound / Of which, an invisible audience listens, / Not to the play, but to itself, ex...

— Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)