Sarah Ruden

Girlhoods, boyhoods, childhoods, "freindships": Youth is the setting (and subject) in works by Jane Austen, J.M. Coetzee, Michael Ondaatje, and Leo Tolstoy.

Her sixteenth birthday party is tonight. / In the next room, the Lord lets there be light. ...

Fearless and warm, we stayed until / A new time swept around the hill.

Let us give / While we live / Bewildered thanks to God for what we have ...

Remarkable, a wave so sharp and sheer— / It is metal—hear it rattle, like a logger’s gear.

For the Romans, 'luxuria' was the near-equivalent of Greek hubris. It has behind it the imagery of material excess leading to a diminished sense of cause and effect.