Little ita's toddler butt is just so damn cute. 1980 ita is amazing for just how much she is already grown-up ita -- the eyes, the set of the mouth, the knowingness of her gaze: they're all exactly the ita I've seen over and over in grown-up pictures, and met (all too briefly) at the LA F2F. So present, so complete already.
The favorite poems... so good, so gorgeous. My own favorite poem, Google tells me, is nowhere online at all; it's called "Beauty," by Stephen Dobyns. It's long and horribly painful and grotesquely beautiful, and IMO in many ways it's a dark, bitter modern sister to my second favorite poem, and shit, now I'm crying, having read both of them.
And now, Nilly, the end of my second favorite poem will forever after also make me think of you, now that I know the Hebrew word for "orange."