cultural commentary from the desk of Don Shewey
YOUTH
Even very recently, the elders could say [to the youths]: “You know, I have been young and you have never been old.” But today’s young people can reply: “You have never been young in the world I am young in, and you never can be”….This break between generations is wholly new: it is planetary and universal.
— Margaret Mead
YOUTH
Why leave out the worst
pangs of youth? The Princes of Fiction,
who ride through risks to rescue their loves,
know their business, are not really
as young as they look. To be young means
to be all on edge, to be held waiting in a
packed lounge for a personal Call
from Long Distance, for the low voice that
defines one’s future. The fears we know are of
not knowing. Will nightfall bring us
some awful order — Keep a hardware store
in a small town? Teach science for life to
progressive girls? It is getting late.
Shall we ever be asked for? Are we simply
not wanted at all?
— W. H. Auden
another eye opens 