John Ashbery

What is restored Becomes stronger than the loss as it is remembered; Is a new, separate life of its own. A new color. Seriously blue. Unquestioning. Acidly sweet. Must we then pick up the pieces (But what are the pieces, if not separate puzzles themselves, And meanwhile rain abrades the window?) — John Ashbery, from […]

Ernest Becker

The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive. — Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death. (Free Press; 1 edition, May 8, 1997)W

Juan Antonio Villacañas

If pain does not die we shall make it poetry. — Juan Antonio Villacañas, Sublimation of Disobedience (1998)

Clarice Lispector

In the meantime, I am inventing your presence… — Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H. (New Directions, 2012)

Jacques J. Rancourt

Grass so sharp it cuts our shins, I loved you most when there was some semblance of the real— pain, beads of blood—that made me look outside the dream, at the globe of the sky already deteriorating. The facts I don’t remember. Only how it felt to remember the moments I was pulled out. — […]