till human voices wake us

becca / 21 mine / others

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vita Sackville-West wr. c. February 1926

[oumaimas]

The Pond, Mary Oliver

[nighthearts]

inspired by Mary Oliver’s ‘The Kitten’. [explained here]

[nighthearts]

recollection

if you go back there, to those walls and rooms, you will catch yourself in a long dusted

mirror that resembles nothing  more than a cage of shining wire

and the songful echo will have rescinded, like a maple leaf

that falls back to the earth it sprung from

[eternalsummer2006]

wrong boy wrong mouth | e. h.

ig: hsinhuas

[porchbirds]

been thinking abt this a lot. A poetry professor once told me every poet has a particular emotion from which they write. It’s not what they write about, but what emerges from the writing. For instance, louise gluck posits that Richard Siken’s central emotion is panic. Even though the word is never spoken to or about, the poems are saturated with it. I think Mary Oliver can be characterized by relief. Anyway, i think having that recognizeable Emotion is a major mark of poetic voice & it’s development

[inkskinned]

i’ve been obsessed, lately, with the way we say things. how sometimes you hear the great northeast in the clip of my “course” and the back-of-the-mouth “roof.” about how i find out little bits about where you grew up just from the way you slide through “news.” 

our bodies splayed on the floor of my room. i open the book i’m writing about you and say how do you say this and i point to hedonist. 

you say head-on-ist.

i say it’s heed-on-ist.

you say you heathen and i’m struck by the smile on you.

i scoop up water in my palms and watch it run out. is it in-sure-unce or in-sure-ance. 

in-sure-ance. your hair is catching the sun. i watch your mouth move around the syllables like syrup.

we’re outside and i point up. is that a firefly or a lightning bug? 

you look over to me. whatever it is, i’m in love.

and whatever it is, i’m in love.

[savagedefectives]

larissa pham

[nighthearts]

for @entiices

[eternalsummer2006]

inspired by this poem by @julykings

[lesbianherstorian]

“wild geese” from dream work by mary oliver, may 1986

[gnossienne]

Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist” from Intentions (1891)

[aikaleegrave]

when i say i was in love —

i mean a panting dogtooth kind of love not for the bright in my eyes but the way you could kick me and i’d come begging back not the barking laugh but the collar digging into a throat and i don’t know if it was mine or yours or if there ever was a difference — i mean winter night kind of love like the stars are so much closer when the air burns my throat like this was supposed to be beautiful but under all this cold i can’t find any of our old promises it’s not malevolence just a lack of good — i mean a ruined kind of love listening to that song at three in the morning and not feeling anything anymore and this isn’t pretty the way i’m pulling apart my tendons into road maps like they’ll lead me anywhere this isn’t pretty this silence but it feels better than your hands — i mean — i mean — 

i mean a love like i don’t want to die anymore, but that doesn’t mean i’m still in love with you.

[tenderblues]

E.M. Forster, Maurice

[aavillainess]

you want a shrine to your name,          a tether-prayer for sentience.           you want your name coating mouths like blood           & you’d pour it down throats if you could. you hope to leave a mark, even if it’s a brand on the earth. you craved palpability, a hand at your neck;           some proof you’re still here,           even if it’s your hand melting into the stovetop.           you hunger for worship; someone to burn, a sacrifice           on your altar. some crimson to paint yourself mortal           after deification. some skin to wear that isn’t yours. you want your neck draped          on your guilt-crafted guillotine.           something to die for, something to cry for, you           clutch onto any & every in hopes for something. you want because you are,          you want because you suffer. - starvation in passing (aavillainess)

[nighthearts]

[lifeinpoetry]

I believed then that if only they’d get quiet enough, we’d hear the universe calling back, telling us what to do next. Of course, if we’d been quiet, we would’ve heard nothing. And that silence, too, would’ve ruined us.

— Carrie Fountain, from “Experience,” Burn Lake