Mother, give me the sun

Writer, Photographer, Collector

[averno-averno]

All night: cliffs of shadow which the light beats up against. 

[averno-averno]

At this time of year there is no sunset / just some movements inside the light and then a sinking away.

Anne Carson, The Glass Essay 

[averno-averno]

What if I can never again locate the words that work?

Joan Didion

[averno-averno]

Behind a seagull the sky shrieks 

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“I heard a heart beating inside me that wasn’t mine.”

— Clarice Lispector, from The Complete Stories: “The Foreign Legion,”

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

There are so many ways to be guilty and lose yourself forever and betray yourself and not face yourself.

Clarice Lispector, from The Complete Stories: “The Crime Of The Mathematics Professor,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[two-solitudes-deactivated201810]

— Ingeborg Bachmann, select lines from “My Bird,” In the Storm of Roses: Selected Poems by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated, edited and introduced by Mark Anderson (Princeton University Press, 1986)

[theclassicsreader]

I told myself if I had nothing the world couldn’t touch me.

Louise Glück, from “Mutable Earth” (via theclassicsreader)

[averno-averno]

The reason I drink is to understand the yellow sky the great yellow sky, said Van Gogh. When he looked at the world he saw the nails that attach colours to things and he saw that the nails were in pain.

Anne Carson

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

As for me, in my real self, I am way off in the darkness and sometimes the light,

James Wright, from a letter to Anne Sexton written c. February 1961

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

I have breathed better, I have hated things less. I have admired more freely what deserved admiration. With you, I have accepted more. I have learned to live.

Albert Camus, from a letter to María Casares written c. July 1949

[retentionalfinitude2]

“Single motion which departed, leading itself by the hand.” –Anne Carson, Nox

[soracities]

Sophocles, Elektra (trans. Anne Carson)

[averno-averno]

After the death, after the black of black, this lightness─

Anne Sexton, Fury of Sunrises

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

They say I’m not worthy of entering your door. Your door is empty and full of light.

Alice Notley, from In The Pines: Poems; “In The Pines,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[lifeinpoetry]

My brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. He held it up to my ear. “Listen,” he said, “life and no escape.”

Anne Carson, “The Wishing Jewel: Introduction to Water Margins,” The Anthropology of Water, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (via lifeinpoetry)

[a-quiet-green-agreement]

–Anne Carson, Nox