From: The Bell Jar

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath

Poem: "Wanting Sumptuous Heavens"

No one grumbles among the Oyster clans,
And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.
Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
There is no end to our grumbling; we want
Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven
But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

Robert Bly
The Best American Poetry 2008

From: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"In the old days when his so-called friends would hurt him or drag his trust through the mud he always crawled voluntarily back into the abuse, out of fear and loneliness, something he'd always hated himself for, but not this time. If there existed in his high school years any one moment he took pride in it was clearly this one. Even told his sister about it during her next visit. She said, Way to go, O! He'd finally showed some backbone, hence some pride, and although it hurt, it also felt motherfucking good."

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz

Arts and Crafts: René Magritte

So this is probably my favorite painting. Painted in 1953, it’s called Golconda. It’s named after a ruined city in India. For hundreds of years, the city of Golconda enjoyed tremendous wealth because it was a center of the diamond industry. Golconda translates to “mine of wealth.”

A biography of Magritte suggests this about his work:

“What he wants to establish is a disturbing relationship between the world and objects.”

Golconda

René Magritte

From: Prom

"I didn’t pay attention to the announcements in Homeroom on Monday because I had to analyze another poem for English. This one was about the moon—dumb, but very short. Poems are short because nobody can keep up that level of stupidness for more than one page."

Prom
Laurie Halse Anderson

Found on The Writer's Almanac

"Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
Are greater and more important than both of us.
They are the only documents
Where people will discover
Your beauty
And my madness."

Nizar Quabbani

From: "To the Virgins..."

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

To the Virgins to Make Much of Time
Robert Herrick