Octavio Paz
There are moments that explode and become stars — Octavio Paz, from “Seeds for a psalm,” Early Poems 1935-1955 (New Directions, 1973)
Month: January 2020
René Char
In the streets of the town goes my love. Small matter where she moves in divided time. She is no longer my love, anyone may speak with her. She remembers no longer: who exactly loved her? She seeks her equal in glances, pledging. The space she traverses is my faithfulness. She traces a hope and… Continue reading René Char
Marguerite Duras
You alone became the outer surface of my life, the side I never see, and you will be that, the unknown part of me, until I die. — Marguerite Duras, Emily L. (Pantheon, 1989)
Mariève Rugo
We create what we remember to survive all we never had. — Mariève Rugo, from “On Not Being Able to Write,” What Will Suffice: Contemporary American Poets on the Art of Poetry, ed. by Christopher Buckley and Christopher Merrill (Gibbs Smith, 1995)
Frank LaRue
Did you know in the old tongues / ‘regret’ means to ‘weep again’? — Frank LaRue Owen, from “Savor,” The Temple of Warm Harmony (Homebound Publications, 2019)
Michelle Nguyen
sometimes when I’m not paying attention, I am brought to a moment, passed when my legs ran against beach sand racing towards waves, relentless a memory just barely out of grasp of being young and being free from obligation, rising rent prices career leaps and bounds I’m getting farther and farther from the shoreline I’m… Continue reading Michelle Nguyen
Craig Childs
Alone is a state of being. Not loneliness, but aloneness. It is something sought rather than avoided. — Craig Childs, from “On Being Alone,” Emergence Magazine (no. 2, Wildness)
Kapka Kassabova
You will ache for slow beauty to save you from your quick, quick life. — Kapka Kassabova, from “The Door,” Clare Morgan’s What Poetry Brings to Business (University of Michigan Press, 2010)
Angelo NIkolopoulos
That beauty exists outside myself is a consolation / like watching love happen elsewhere. — Angelo NIkolopoulos, from “From The Body Archive,” The Literary Review (vol. 61, no. 2, Fall 2018)
Kapka Kassabova
And it’s a relief, or a small death, to be standing, dressed in the simplicity of night, for once not crumpled by ecstasy, anticipation or senseless joy. Silently, you greet the ocean, this pliant metaphor for anything we feel at a given time. As of tonight, you ascribe to it no meaning, no truth, no… Continue reading Kapka Kassabova
