Jack Kerouac
She brooded and bit her rich lips: my soul began its first sink into her, deep, heady, lost; like drowning in a witches’ brew, Keltic, sorcerous, starlike. ― Jack Kerouac, Maggie Cassidy. (Avon 1959)
Month: December 2018
Hayden Carruth
I think the poem is not Transparent, as some have said, not a looking-glass, as some have also said, Yet it has almost the quality of disappearance In its cage of visibility. It disperses among the words. It is fluidity, a vapor of love. — Hayden Carruth, from “The Impossible Indispensability of the Ars Poetica,”… Continue reading Hayden Carruth
Simone Weil
Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling. — Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace. (Routledge; 1 edition, November 14, 2002) Originally published 1947.
Wallace Stevens
It is difficult even to choose the adjective For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. — Wallace Stevens, from “The Plain Sense of Things,” The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Alfred A. Knopf, 1954)
George R.R. Martin
I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once. ― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings. (Bantam; Reprint edition, May 28, 2002) Originally published 1998.
Ana Paula Inácio
what do you have to say besides your imperfect presence, your face of sand, did you cross through Seneca on foot? what you say is recorded on the table you have a glass, you have wine. what can you say that won’t turn to dust? Throw stones instead, marl, basalt, schist. — Ana Paula Inácio,… Continue reading Ana Paula Inácio
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve? — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot. (Modern Library; New edition edition, April 8, 2003) Originally published 1869,
Carl Phillips
Here, in the deepening blue of our corruption, let love be at least one corruption we chose together. — Carl Phillips, from “Almost Tenderly,” Kenyon Review (Winter, 2009)
Rainbow Rowell
“I’d know you in the dark,” he said. “From a thousand miles away. There’s nothing you could become that I haven’t already fallen in love with.” ― Rainbow Rowell, Attachments. (Dutton, April 14, 2011)
Richard Jackson
Night walks through our days and no one notices. We like to think of the intricate beauty of a swallow’s flight, but it is only a desperate, open mouthed search for insects. There are three truths you have taught me here: that our shadows will desert us for other, better objects; that Time steps away… Continue reading Richard Jackson
