CPB Classic: Some poems, a song, and a couple of books

From July, 2013


Acquainted with the Night -- Robert Frost


I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.


Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies -- Edna St. Vincent Millay


Nobody that matters, that is.
Distant relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for an hour,
And they gave one candy in a pink-and-green stripéd bag, or a jack-knife,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all.


The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock -- T.S. Eliot


And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."


You're the top -- Louis Armstrong (Cole Porter)


I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop,
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!


Escape from Freedom -- Erich Fromm


"Fromm's thought merits the critical attention of all concerned with the human condition and its future."


Heart of Darkness -- Joseph Conrad


"Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of unextinguishable regrets."