The Paris Review

Staff Picks: Royals, Rothkos, and Realizations

Lawrence Ferlinghetti at Caffe Trieste, 2012. Photo: Christopher Michel (CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)). Via Wikimedia Commons.

I have always loved November. I don’t know if that’s because I was born in it or because it’s when fall becomes the cruelest version of itself. The air bites; the final leaves fall to the ground. Either way, the month is tailor-made for nostalgia. At times like these, I often turn to the first poet I ever loved, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In high school, I memorized “” and recited it to myself daily as a strange sort of mantra. At the time, I thought myself the girl in the poem, a heaving form full of tragedy and potential. But now, I see

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