Date: 1995

"I came / again and again, each time accumulating lucidity, // until at last I was floating high up near the ceiling looking down / on the two souls clasped there on the bed /with their mortal boundaries // visible around them like lines on a map."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

"Mornings when I meditated / I was presented with a nude glimpse of my lone soul, / not the complex mysteries of love and hate."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

But the Nudes are still as clear in my mind / as pieces of laundry that froze on the clothesline overnight."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

"She has reversed the roles of thou and Thou / not as a display of power but to force out of herself some pity / for this soul trapped in glass, / which is her true creation."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 1995

"Inside the dark sky of his mind / Isaac could hear God / moving down a country road bordered by trees."

— Carson, Anne (b. 1951)

Date: 2007

"And at the same time, a censor somewhere in my brain was simplifying things for me, helping me to cope with the necessary."

— Engel, Howard (b. 1931)

Date: 2007

"It would keep, and my brain filed it away for later."

— Engel, Howard (b. 1931)

Date: 2007

"I have a brain full of remembered names but the road is often blocked with rubble."

— Engel, Howard (b. 1931)

Date: 2007

"[M]y brain ... did most of what I wanted it to do, but it had sand traps that I learned to avoid."

— Engel, Howard (b. 1931)

Date: 2007

"I knew I could no longer rely on the 'sticking plaster' of memory"

— Engel, Howard (b. 1931)