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— Paul Guest, from “1987.”
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mary oliver already said everything
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afternoonpoetics reblogged
Crystal Wilkinson, “Witness”
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violentwavesofemotion-deactivat
I remember walking with Stanley Kunitz and saying: “Stanley, something has me in its mouth and is chewing.” And he said, “Yes, and you must wait to see who you are when it’s done with you.”
— Marie Howe, from an interview conducted by Victoria Redel c. October 1997
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ellen thesleff (finnish, 1869 - 1954)
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“That’s why I read poetry. I read poetry to stay alive. That’s why I went to poetry in the first place, that’s why I stay with it, that’s why I’ll never leave it.”
—
Marie Howe, from an interview taken by Victoria Redel
(via violentwavesofemotion)
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From The Creative Spirit: Children’s Literature (1977), June Jordan
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violentwavesofemotion-deactivat
“The silvery tears of April? Youth of May? Or June that breathes out life for butterflies?”
— John Keats, from Complete Poems; “To the Ladies who Saw Me Crowned,”
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– Walter Benton (1904-1976), “This is My Beloved” (Entry April 29), published in 1943
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gardenapparition
“Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”
— Pablo Neruda, from “XL,” 100 Love Sonnets (University of Texas Press, 1986)
Jack Gilbert, from Collected Poems; "Waking at Night"
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"Somewhere a Band is Playing," Ray Bradbury
Somewhere a band is playing, Playing the strangest tunes, Of sunflower seeds and sailors Who tide with the strangest moons. Somewhere a drummer simmers And trembles with times forlorn, Remembering days of summer In futures yet unborn. Futures so far they are ancient And filled with Egyptian dust, That smell of the tomb and the lilac, And seed that is spent from lust, And peach that is hung on a tree branch Far out in the sky from one’s reach, There mummies as lovely as lobsters Remember old futures and teach. And children sit by on the stone floor And draw out their lives in the sands, Remembering deaths that won’t happen In futures unseen in far lands. Somewhere a band is playing Where the moon never sets in the sky And nobody sleeps in the summer And nobody puts down to die; And Time then just goes on forever And hearts then continue to beat To the sound of the old moon-drum drumming And the glide of Eternity’s feet; Somewhere the old people wander And linger themselves into noon And sleep in the wheat fields yonder To rise as fresh children with moon. Somewhere the children, old, maunder And know what it is to be dead And turn in their weeping to ponder Oblivious filed ‘neath their bed. And sit at the long dining table Where Life makes a banquet of flesh, Where dis-able makes itself able And spoiled puts on new masks of fresh. Somewhere a band is playing Oh listen, oh listen that tune! If you learn it you’ll dance on forever In June and yet June and more June. And Death will be dumb and not clever And Death will lie silent forever In June and June and more June.
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It first happened in the winter when she'd just turned sixteen. The language that had pricked and confined her like clothing made from a thousand needles abruptly disappeared. Words still reached her ears, but now a thick, dense layer of air buffered the space between her cochleas and brain. Wrapped in that foggy silence, the memories of the tongue and lips that had been used to pronounce, of the hand that had firmly gripped the pencil, grew remote. She no longer thought in language. She moved without language and understood without language – as it had been before she learned to speak, no, before she had obtained life, silence, absorbing the flow of time like balls of cotton, enveloped her body both outside and in.
– Greek Lessons, Han Kang, trans. Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won
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“It was around then that I realized for the first time that falling in love is like being haunted. Even before I opened my eyes in the morning, you would slip in under my eyelids. When I opened them, you instantly transferred to the ceiling, the wardrobe, the windowpane, the street, the far-off sky, and glimmered there like dappled light. You haunted me more persistently than I imagine any ghost ever could.”
– Greek Lessons, Han Kang, trans. Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won
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“My sister’s soul, like mine, must still be lingering somewhere; but where? Now there were no such things as bodies for us, presumably physical proximity was no longer necessary for the two of us to meet. But without bodies, how would we know each other? Would I still recognise my sister as a shadow?”
– Han Kang, Human Acts, trans. Deborah Smith
“What a strange thing one’s flesh and blood is.
How strange are the ways that it brings us sorrow.”
– Han Kang, Greek Lessons
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“That when the most frail, tender, forlorn parts of us, that is to say our life-breaths, are at some point returned to the world of matter, we will receive nothing in recompense.
That when the time comes for me, I don’t see myself remembering the full range of the experiences I’d accumulated up to that point only in terms of beauty.
That it is in this tired, worn context that I understand Plato.
That he himself knew that such beauty does not exist.
And that there is no complete thing, ever. At least in this world.”
– Han Kang, Greek Lessons