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—Euripides, translated by Anne Carson

Time works so hard for us, if only we can let it.

― Tana French, The Likeness

"Hope and Love" by Jane Hirshfield

All winter the blue heron slept among the horses. I do not know the custom of herons, do not know if the solitary habit is their way, or if he listened for some missing one— not knowing even that was what he did— in the blowing sounds in the dark, I know that hope is the hardest love we carry. He slept with his long neck folded, like a letter put away.

#poetry #poem #jane hirshfield

"Practice" by Ellen Bryant Voigt

To weep unbidden, to wake at night in order to weep, to wait for the whisker on the face of the clock to twitch again, moving the dumb day forward— is this merely practice? Some believe in heaven, some in rest. We'll float, you said. Afterward we'll float between two worlds— five bronze beetles stacked like spoons in one peony blossom, drugged by lust: if I came back as a bird I'd remember that— until everyone we love is safe is what you said.

#poetry #poem #ellen bryant voigt

"Magdalene: The Addict" by Marie Howe

I liked Hell, I liked to go there alone relieved to lie in the wreckage, ruined, physically undone. The worst had happened. What else could hurt me then? I thought it was the worst, thought nothing worse could come. Then nothing did, and no one.

#poetry #poem #marie howe

I have not read most of the big 19th-century novels that people consider 'essential,' nor most of the 20th-century ones for that matter. But this does not embarrass me. There are many films to see, many friends to visit, many walks to take, many playlists to assemble and many favorite books to reread. Life's too short for anxious score-keeping. Also, my grandmother is illiterate, and she's one of the best people I know. Rereading is a deep personal consolation for me, but other things console, too.

—Teju Cole, answering the question "What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?"

#quotes #teju cole

Fable by Andrea Cohen

I'm tired of meaning, says the tortoise to the hare, who agrees. The lions and crows don't disagree, and the snake chimes in: It would be better if we didn't have to moonlight as morality lessons. Exactly, says the chicken. I'd like to let loose once in a while, I'd like to stretch my wings, she says. Yes, says the fox. You should get out of your pen more, says the fox. You should let me help, says the fox, opening the latch to the evening. It was a fine evening and a fine conclusion they were coming to, thought the fox, helping the chicken out of her feathers.

#poetry #poem #andrea cohen

"I miss the tilt-" by Diane Seuss

a-whirls of drunk and dragged to bed, waking not knowing where or who the hell that is and how to walk or be. It was not free, the carnival of mind required tickets, scrolls of them, snake-length, the visionary spins and shooting gallery where someone turned the gun on me.

#poetry #poem #diane seuss

I am filled that day with vile or evil feelings—ill will toward one I think I should love, ill will toward myself, and discouragement over the work I think I should be doing. I look out the window of my borrowed house, out the narrow window of the smallest room. Suddenly there it is, my own spirit: an old white dog with bowed legs and swaying head staring around the corner of the porch with one mad, cataract-filled eye.

― Lydia Davis, Almost No Memory

#quotes #lydia davis

Passion and Form by Louise Glück

Ah, they have kissed! The rhyme Comes in unnoticed.

#poetry #poem #louise glück

The Calculus of Faith by Chris Abani

In the end I realize every human body is a scripture. The first miracle was a mango, full and weighty with ripeness. The second miracle was a sheet of onionskin paper torn from a King James Bible filled with oregano and thyme and smoked. The third miracle was the smooth turquoise of my mother's fountain pen. The scrape of it, the insistent pull of its nib and words, glorious and alive. My fear is a hole I crawl into, a hollowed-out log, a curve in a stump. If you listen, if you listen— in the book I am reading it is raining.

#poety #poem #chris abani

Days by Philip Larkin

What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields.

#poetry #poem #philip larkin

Imaginary Conversation by Linda Pastan

You tell me to live each day as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen where before coffee I complain of the day ahead—that obstacle race of minutes and hours, grocery stores and doctors. But why the last? I ask. Why not live each day as if it were the first— all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing her eyes awake that first morning, the sun coming up like an ingénue in the east? You grind the coffee with the small roar of a mind trying to clear itself. I set the table, glance out the window where dew has baptized every living surface.

#poetry #poem #linda pastan

Locus Solis by John Koethe

I'm a sucker for the private place, Though it's boring once you've found it: You're always right, which makes being right Worthless, and yet you want to stay there Even though you hate it. I remember The initial vision: elegance Mingled with the ordinary, intimacy In a kingdom of three or four. Ecstasy Was a dream before it was a drug, However oversold. I miss the distractions That distracted me—distracted me From what exactly? From anonymity And inconsequence, and from how tenuous Life feels when you're alone and nobody cares What's true or false? The elegance Is always in the telling, not in the truth, and yet Sometimes the words still speak to me As if they were true. They stick in my mind, They stick in my throat. It's still there.

#poetry #poem #john koethe

Commuting by Denis Johnson

We understand well that we must hold our lives up in our arms like the victims of solitary, terrible accidents, that we must still hold our lives to their promises and hold ourselves up to our lives to be sure always they are larger, wholer, realer than we ourselves, though we must carry them. We on this train with our lives in our laps are waiting patiently for the next moment and maybe we will be lifted away by our lives as are the moments we rise up to hold with us, or maybe we will just slacken above our drinks in the club car chatting baseball, all of us headed to apply for the same job, all of us qualified, all of us turning now into snowflakes too delicate, yet each holding in itself a tiny stark particle of darkness and weight, the heart's cinder turning over.

#poetry #poem #denis johnson

“Where can we live but days?” —Philip Larkin

#quotes #philip larkin

Each time I work on a novel, I endure the questions, I live inside them. When I reach the end of these questions—which is not the same as when I find answers to them—is when I reach the end of the writing process. By then, I am no longer as I was when I began, and from that changed state, I start again. The next questions follow, like links in a chain, or like dominoes, overlapping and joining and continuing, and I am moved to write something new.

—Han Kang, Nobel lecture, 2024

#han kang #quotes

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