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. ― Robert Frost Public Domain Image via Pixabay
writing
Quote for Today: John Burroughs
Writing is reporting what we saw after the vision has left us. It is catching the fish which the tide has left far up on our shores in the low and depressed places. --John Burroughs Image © Adityamadhav83 with CCLicense
Quote for Today: Alexander Chee
When I am gripped with despair, when I think I might stop, I speak to my dead. Tell them a story. What am I doing with this life? They hold me accountable. I let them make me bolder or more modest or louder or more moving, but I ask them to listen, and then write. … Continue reading Quote for Today: Alexander Chee
Quote for Today: Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Walker-thinkers have found various ways to accommodate the gifts that their walking brings. Caught paperless on his walks in the Czech enclaves of Iowa, maestro Dvořák scribbles the string quartets that visited his brain on his starched white shirt cuffs (so the legend goes). More proactively, Thomas Hobbes fashioned a walking stick for himself … Continue reading Quote for Today: Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Quote for Today: Roger Rosenblatt
Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening. --Roger Rosenblatt, "How to Write Great", New York Times, July 29, 2012 Image: Around the corner © Bruce Krasting with CCLicense
Quote for Today: Marie Rutkoski
Why would one ever be so insane as to ditch a perfectly beautiful metaphor? Cut back, of course, prune if you like, so that the best metaphors are clear and sparkling. But I will throw out unread the book that promises me no metaphors inside. --Marie Rutkoski Public Domain Image via Pixabay
Quote for Today: Philip Roth
I needed my life as a springboard for my fiction. I have to have something solid under my feet when I write. I'm not a fantasist. I bounce up and down on the diving board, and I go into the water of fiction. But I've got to begin in life so I can pump life … Continue reading Quote for Today: Philip Roth
