The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston, from Robert Frost to Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath, - Hardcover

Robert Lowell: "Robert Lowell's unmistakable voice -- weary, nasal, hesitant, whining, mumbling, a curiously hybrid blend of Yankee and Confederate intonations that descended from both family and literary sources -- seems in retrospect to dominate the poetic harmony of the late 1950s in Boston."

Ted Hughes And Sylvia Plath: "Ted and Sylvia were invited to dinner, with a copy of the June Atlantic Monthly (containing poems by Adrienne Rich and myself) on the table, and the evening, I thought in my innocence, was cheery, full of laughter and Ted's good humor. But Sylvia's unpublished journal had other observations to make, based on other feelings."

Anne Sexton: "Sexton, who smoked continuously, struck a match and seared her hand with a fragment of phosphorus. For the next two hours her pain was a presence in the room: her hand was immersed in a plastic bag full of ice water, her ululations rose and fell. The guests tried to speak of other things, but it proved impossible: it was the pain that governed."

Stanley Kunitz: "Kunitz in those days seemed a little distant, with his European moustache, carrying his head with his prominent nose held high, and his lithe, almost athletic walk. He became, in his great old age, a better-looking man than in his middle years, as though the changes in his soul had tailored his body for a better fit."

Adrienne Rich: "Pixyish and charming, witty in person as her written work seldom is, she was clearly as glad as anyone to be admired, but she was holding something back. When I praised her work she looked at me quizzically, as though there were something she (or I) did not understand."