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Rockin' Chair.

“The Manor Garden

The fountains are dry and the roses over.
Incense of death. Your day approaches.
The pears fatten like little buddhas.
A blue mist is dragging the lake.

You move through the era of fishes,
The smug centuries of the pig—
Head, toe and finger
Come clear of the shadow. History

Nourishes these broken flutings,
These crowns of acanthus,
And the crow settles her garments.
You inherit white heather, a bee’s wing,

Two suicides, the family wolves,
Hours of blankness. Some hard stars
Already yellow the heavens.
The spider on its own string

Crosses the lake. The worms
Quit their usual habitations.
The small birds converge, converge
With their gifts to a difficult borning.”

—Sylvia Plath, 1959

Listen Up: Bobbie Gentry.

"The Satyr and the Saint, by Leonardo Bercovici

Subtitled 'A Novel of the Roman Film Colony,' The Satyr and the Saint is a spoof of the world of Fellini, Antonioni, De Sica, and all the stars and denizens of Cinecitta. Bercovici learned about the Italian film scene after he was blacklisted from Hollywood in the early 1950s and moved to Europe to continue working as a screenwriter. The satyr of the title is Rudolfo Urbani, a renowned film director and rival of Casanova. Urbani hires a young Sicilian novelist whom he learns is still celibate in his late twenties — hence the saint. A satire about Italian manners and mores, it is definitely a candidate for further research." —Neglected Books via

Why 46 People Died Because of a Story That Never Made Sense.