The love of books. My library is an archive of longings.
Two kinds of writers. Those who think this life is all there is, and want to describe everything: the fall, the battle, the accouchement, the horse-race. That is, Tolstoy. And those who think this life is a kind of testing-ground (for what we don’t know — to see how much pleasure + pain we can bear or what pleasure + pain are?) and want to describe only the essentials. That is, Dostoyevsky. The two alternatives. How can one write like T. after D.? The task is to be as good as D. — as serious spiritually, + then go on from there.
here is my body, poems declare.
I think being a poet in the world opposes the very nature of it, which is driven by profit. In a poem, we have only a little snapshot of the soul in a moment of being. Still, though there is no monetary gain, there is profit. Something enters the brain that wasn’t there before—an illumination, an aliveness, a triumphing over shame.
The stars flow beneath the water
The clouds freeze or collapse
In laughter, lure like a pledge
Like hockey, trust, language
Approach and spit on a flower
Cruelly and scream in the forest
Of mildness, portrayed by art
As endless steps into the sky
But while all this is going on
An aimed surmise, noiseless
As the heaven that gathers it
Banishes beauty-hemmed man
To bed, as sleep extinguishes
The planet in whirring dreams
Where slowness flows to be
Breathless, like a bicyclist.
we come to news to learn the facts and we come back to stories to know what it means to exist inside those facts.
It’s only when I write that I can see things through to their conclusion.
Sentences are strategic. They let you off.
You write to impose yourself on the world, and you have to believe in your own ability when the world shows no sign of agreeing with you.
Ziua lor se scurge așa, dincolo de orice ritm previzibil, într-un provizoriu perfect.
azi-noapte am visat flori de câmp. când m-am trezit, era aproape rouă.
What has been possible to salvage has been saved and is dearer to our hearts because it survived. What is gone is treasured because it was what we once were. We gather our past and present into the depths of our being and face tomorrow.
You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.
The past is another country; they do things differently there.