Ode to the Beloved’s Hips Bells are they—shaped on the eighth day—silvered percussion in the morning—are the morning. Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me— I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock right now—so to them I come—struck-dumb chime-blind, tolling with… Continue reading Natalie Díaz
Life is rarely about what happened; it’s mostly about what we think happened. ― Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto. (Scribner; Reprint edition, July 2, 2004)
Look at us, she said. We are all of us in this room still waiting to be transformed. This is why we search for love. We search for it all our lives, even after we find it. — Louise Glück, from “An Endless Story,” The Threepenny Review (Summer 2018)
… in such darkness I can only write, keep on going forward, till the end. I am now in the dark part of truth. — Hélène Cixous, from “Respiration de la hache (Hiss of the axe),” trans. Keith Cohen, Stigmata: Escaping Texts (Routledge, 2005)
what i want is to be aware of the spaces between stars, to breathe continuously the sources of sky, a veined sail moving, my love never setting foot to the dark anvil of earth — Pat Lowther, from “Random Interview,” Time Capsule (Polestar, 1996)
Words too can be wrung from us like a cry from that space which doesn’t seem to be the body nor a metaphor curving into perspective. Rather the thickness silence gains when pressed. The ghosts of grammar veer toward shape while my hopes still lie embedded in a quiet myopia from which they don’t want… Continue reading Rosmarie Waldrop
A voice sobs on colored sand Where colored horses run Athwart the surf Us alone in the universe Where griefs move like the sea Of the love lost Under the morning star Creeping down the sky Into pale blind water And we make love At the very edge of the cliff Where the vineyards end… Continue reading Kenneth Rexroth
Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to… Continue reading Henry Miller
I would liken you To a night without stars Were it not for your eyes. I would liken you To a sleep without dreams Were it not for your songs. — Langston Hughes, “Quiet Girl,” The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (First Vintage Classic, 1995)
Death’s a sad bone; bruised, you’d say, / and yet she waits for me, year after year, / to empty my breath from its bad prison. — Anne Sexton, from “Wanting to Die,” The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton. (Mariner Books; First Mariner Books Edition edition, April 28, 1999) Originally published September 30th 1981.
The Vale of Soul-Making 