Varick Street Varick Street
March 15, 1947 At night the factories struggle awake, wretched uneasy buildings veined with pipes attempt their work. Trying to breathe the elongated nostrils haired with spikes give off such stenches, too. And I shall sell you sell you sell you of course, my dear, and you’ll sell me. On certain floors certain wonders. Pale dirty light, some captured iceberg being prevented from melting. See the mechanical moons, sick, being made to wax and wane at somebody’s instigation. And I shall sell you sell you sell you of course, my dear, and you’ll sell me. Lights music of love work on. The presses print calendars I suppose, the moons make medicine or confectionary. Our bed shrinks from the soot and the hapless odors hold us close. And I shall sell you sell you sell you of course, my dear, and you’ll sell me. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), the poet laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, published two poems in The Nation between 1945 and 1947, when Randall Jarrell was interim literary editor. She was a longtime friend of the more frequent Nation contributor Marianne Moore, who in a 1946 review in these pages described Bishop as “spectacular in being unspectacular.”
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