A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
words
Quote for Today: Maria Lehtman
If only our words would light up the hearts of others – like the sun awakening spring trees and flowers. We might not worry about the evening shadows any longer.
―Maria Lehtman, The Dew Drops
New Morning, Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park, MO, 2017, Katherine McDaniel
Quote for Today: Machado de Assis
Lovers’ language, give me an exact and poetic comparison to say what those eyes of Capitu were like. No image comes to mind that doesn’t offend against the rules of good style, to say what they were and what they did to me. Undertow eyes? Why not? Undertow. That’s the notion that the new expression put in my head. They held some kind of mysterious, active fluid, a force that dragged one in, like the undertow of a wave retreating from the shore on stormy days. So as not to be dragged in, I held onto anything around them, her ears, her arms, her hair spread about her shoulders; but as soon as I returned to the pupils of her eyes again, the wave emerging from them grew towards me, deep and dark, threatening to envelop me, draw me in and swallow me up.
―Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro
Public Domain Image via PxHere.com
Quote for Today: Herta Müller
I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.
―Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel
Public Domain Image via pexels.com
Quote for Today: Diane Setterfield
But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grow pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.
―Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
Image: Lonely child © Zhao! with CCLicense
Quote for Today: Herta Müller
It seems to me that the objects don’t know their material, the gestures don’t know their feelings, and the words don’t know the mouth that speaks them. But to be certain of our own existence, we need the objects, the gestures, and the words. After all, the more words we are allowed to take, the freer we become. If our mouth is banned, then we attempt to assert ourselves through gestures, even objects. They are more difficult to interpret, and take time before they arouse suspicion.
—Herta Müller, Nobel Prize Lecture, 2009
Public Domain Image via Pixabay
Quote for Today: James Fenton
The term ‘epitaph’ itself means ‘something to be spoken at a burial or engraved upon a tomb.’ When an epitaph is a poem written for a tomb, and appears in a book, we are aware that we are not reading it in its proper form: we are reading a reproduction. The original of the epitaph is the tomb itself, with its words cut into the stone.
Public Domain Image via Pixabay
Quote for Today: Ambrose Bierce
OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a writer’s attitude toward “obsolete” words is as true a measure of his literary ability as anything except the character of his work. A dictionary of obsolete and obsolescent words would not only be singularly rich in strong and sweet parts of speech; it would add large possessions to the vocabulary of every competent writer who might not happen to be a competent reader.
―Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary
Image: Underwood Typewriter Keys © Steven Depolo with CCLicense
Quote for Today: Hugh Laurie
People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it’s never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we’ve ever read a book, that day doesn’t fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over.
―Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller
Image: Night Rises, Great Sand Dunes National Park © Katherine McDaniel
Quote for Today: Muhammad Iqbal
I am a hidden meaning made to defy
The grasp of words and walk away
With free will and destiny
As living, revolutionary clay.
Image: Woman in the Desert near Sharm-el-Sheikh © David Dennis with CCLicense