Poetry Xtras » "My Picnic With Lolita" by Jack Conway

This is an homage to youth and beauty, from a literary perspective. Since I have been an adjunct professor of writing for a long time (since 1987, beginning at Boston University) I have seen how the youth and beauty of students (in this case female students) impact the environment and the people they come in contact with. This impact goes well beyond the simplistic notion of any sexual connotation, to a more abstract notion that within that youth and beauty lies the promise of hope, invincibility and perhaps even immortality. We all grow old, but in growing older we can see more clearly that the creation of youth and beauty (Lolita) and our affection for it is a necessary part of living, and regrettably we all have moments that we wish, like the narrator in this poem, that we could re-capture.