There was a great field that tilted
Its whiteness up to the line where the slant, blue knife-edge of sky
Cut it off. I stood
In the middle of that space. I looked back, saw
My own tracks march at me. Mercilessly,
They came at me and did not stop. Ahead,
Was the blankness of white. Up it rose. Then the sky.
Evening came, and I sat by the fire, and the flame danced.
All day, I had wandered in the glittering metaphor
For which I could find no referent.
All night, that night, asleep, I would wander, lost in a dream
That was only what the snow dreamed.
—Robert Penn Warren, closing lines from “III. Time as Hypnosis” in Or Else: Poem/Poems 1968-1974 (Random House, 1974)
“Be careful not to be too careful in first drafts; let the poem go, let it always find its next moment, hope that it gets away from you.”
—Stephen Dunn, from “The Poet as Teacher” in Walking Light: Essays and Memoirs (W. W. Norton & Co., 1993)
“That’s why I write; to bear the world as it crumbles.” —Günter Kunert
Will you understand
if not forgive
that I expect to be loved
beyond deserving, as always?
—Stephen Dunn, closing lines from “Letter Home” in New & Selected Poems: 1974-1994 (W. W. Norton & Co., 1994)
White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field
Coming down
out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like and angel,
or a buddha with wings,
it was beautiful
and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings—
five feet apart—and the grabbing
thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys
of the snow—
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes,
to lurk there,
like a little lighthouse
in the blue shadows—
so I thought:
maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us—
as soft as feathers—
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow—
that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.
—Mary Oliver, from House of Light (Beacon Press, 1990)
Note: Form altered slightly by using common left margin for each line.
“You have written it with your left hand without strenuous pains; you must rewrite it with your right hand, throwing all your force into it.”
Revision advice given to H. Rider Haggard, author of King Solomon’s Mines
“We’re so young. We’re so young. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.” — Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness. “It’s never too late to start.” (via electrichoney)
(Source: nudewave, via electrichoney)
Miles Away
I want you and you are not here. I pause
in this garden, breathing the colour thought is
before language into still air. Even your name
is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again
and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight
I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer
than the words I have you say you said before.
Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me
with a look, standing here whilst cool late light
dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.— Carol Ann Duffy
(Source: mitochondria)
“Well, I love walking into the photographs that you create. I sometimes feel like a ghost on the outside of your pages. You create a kind of photograph through your writing, and I lower myself into the background of that photograph. You never tell us how to think, but you allow us to feel in the most extraordinary way.” — Colum McCann perfectly illustrating how it feels to read one of Ondaatje’s books. (via clavicola)
(via elysskama)
“You become what you behold.” —William Blake
Art: William Blake, “Woman Clothed with the Sun”