But what really kept her going – gave her the keenest sense of the relationship between engulfment and mastery – was the quest for perfect prose. A belief in that idea will have its downside, or side effects. “There certainly is what doctors call a ‘migraine personality’,” she wrote in her essay “In Bed”, “and that personality tends to be ambitious, inward, intolerant of error, rather rigidly organised, perfectionist.” But the kind of person who testifies to a more-or-less equal terror of having an article killed (“soul-searing”), of witnessing “one’s own words in print” (“mortal humiliation”) and of committing to paper any sentence that would “expose me as not good enough” is likely to produce something worthwhile.
With even the first phrase, I feel I’m out of my depth. “Worst, there is none,” I could understand. Or “No worst, there is.” But “No worst, there is none”: What can that possibly mean? That nothing worse exists? That nothing better exists? That perhaps there is no difference, ultimately, between the two?
It lacks a title, this sonnet, but what could it be called? A title would offer to ease a reader in, like a stepping-stone. There is to be no ease in this exhausting, anguished howl. Reading it is like going out into a full-force gale. Or staring into the solar eclipse (where we are warned never to stare). What’s so compelling about the poem is that it concedes nothing and will not compromise. Looking for something to put on a wedding wishes or get well card? You’ve come to the wrong 14 lines.
On a Saturday afternoon in late December, Bill Lee walks through his empty restaurant in Chinatown. Though the tables are draped with white tablecloths, the dining room functions more as a storage space. Wedged between tables are stacks of red-cushioned dining chairs. Signage, featuring large photos of the restaurant’s dishes, leans against a wall. A lone bottle of hand sanitizer sits on a dining table. A year ago, the scene looked very different — the chatter of locals and tourists filled the room as they feasted on Cantonese and Chinese American dishes.
Opened in 1920 at 631 Grant Ave., Far East Cafe is one of San Francisco Chinatown’s oldest restaurants. Much of its decor remains unchanged from its early days: oil paintings depicting historical scenes from Guangdong (where many early Chinese immigrants hailed from), large hanging lanterns from the province, and a set of dark wood-paneled private booths behind red curtains. Buttons for summoning wait staff remain on the walls, though the bell system no longer works.
Friends, will you bear with me today,
for I have awakened
from a dream in which a robin
made with its shabby wings a kind of veil
You know it’s just that
Just that