Quote of the Day (Phyllis McGinley, on a Girl Starting Adolescence)

“Thirteen’s anomalous – not that, not this:

Not folded bud, or wave that laps a shore,

Or moth proverbial from the chrysalis.

Is the one age defeats the metaphor.

Is not a town, like childhood, strongly walled

But easily surrounded; is no city.

Nor, quitted once, can it be quite recalled –

Not even with pity.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Phyllis McGinley (1905-1978), “Portrait of a Girl With Comic Book,” The New Yorker, Oct. 18, 1952, reprinted in American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Vol. 2: E.E. Cummings to May Swenson, edited by Robert Haas and John Hollander (2000)