Susan Elizabeth Phillips,
It was a kiss made in lonely dreams. A kiss that took its time. A kiss that felt so right she couldn’t remember all the reasons it was wrong. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips, This Heart of Mine (Avon, February 5, 2002)
Category: American Literature
Denis Johnson
Time! Time that gives everything but itself,Time that steals everything but the heart—It caught in the throatTo see it light down all around us like [your] dress,And we were the mystery underneath it:Oh it was summer! But it was dusk. — Denis Johnson, from “The Skewbald Horse,” The Veil (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987)
N.D. Wilson
Drink your wine. Laugh from your gut. Burden your moments with thankfulness. Be as empty as you can be when that clock winds down. Spend your life. And if time is a river, may you leave a wake. ― N.D. Wilson, Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent (Thomas Nelson, August 6, 2013)
E.E. Cummings
[Humanity i love you] Humanity i love youbecause you would rather black the boots ofsuccess than enquire whose soul dangles from hiswatch-chain which would be embarassing for both parties and because youunflinchingly applaud allsongs containing the words country home andmother when sung at the old howard Humanity i love you becausewhen you’re hard up you… Continue reading E.E. Cummings
Annie Dillard
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. ― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (Harper Perennial, November 12, 2013)
Charles Wright
No sound but the sound of no sound,late sunlight falling on grass.” — Charles Wright, from “20,” Littlefoot: Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007)
Nate Pritts
The sky of my day is bluein a way that hurts all the unblueness inside me& there are thousands of lines that I could write nextbut I’m waiting to figure out which one is the best.I woke up in a puddle of sun & my soul was maybe raptured;if it was a garment it was… Continue reading Nate Pritts
Carolyn Kizer
Left to our own devices, we devisesuch curious deaths, comas, or mutilations. — Carolyn Kizer, from “Lines to Accompany Flowers for Eve,” Cool Calm and Collected: Poems 1960-2000 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The earth laughs in flowers. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, from “Hamatreya,” Poets of the English Language (Viking Press, 1950)
Ernest Hemingway
Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with… Continue reading Ernest Hemingway
The Vale of Soul-Making 