Date: 1990

"now you see the / two doctors, behind / you, in mind's eye, / probe into your anus, / or ass, or bottom, / behind you, the roto- / rooter-like device / sees all up, concludes / 'like a worn-out inner tube'"

— Creeley, Robert (1926-2005)

Date: 1990

"I did not know the soul / is cleaved so that the soul might be restored. / Live wood hewn, / its sap springs from a sticky wound."

— Lee, Li-Young (b .1957)

Date: Summer, 1991

"Elinor's pupils, those less tractable sphincters of the soul, won't close against the hapless hemorrhaging of her visual attention-flow toward Marianne; it is this, indeed, that renders her consciousness, in turn, habitable, inviting, and formative to readers as 'point-of-view.'"

— Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1950-2009)

Date: 1991

"Zulu Nation, brothers that's creation; / Minds get flooded, ejaculation -- / Right on the two inch tape."

— Tribe Called Quest [Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Jarobi White]

Date: 1992

"Now it would be folly to deny that human beings can keep their thoughts secret, can talk to themselves without making any noise, can sketch figures before their mind's eye instead of on pieces of paper."

— Kenny, Anthony (b. 1931)

Date: 1992

"Indigestion tablets, thought Victor, belching softly, to help break down the doughy bulk of sensation?"

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"No doubt suicide would turn out to be the violent preface to yet another span of nauseating consciousness, of diminishing spirals and tightening nooses, and memories like shrapnel tearing all day long through his flesh."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1994

"Pigsty for a brain, / Stop them [the body and soul] from making faces at each other / In the mirror!"

— Simic, Charles (b. 1938)

Date: 1995

"Gradually I understood that these were naked glimpses of my soul."

— 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)