I can't sleep…
The first moment I wrote in my notebook again, I wrote of that fleeting feeling in the morning, of possibility.
That’s what I want Drifts to be, my desire and longing for it.
— Kate Zambreno, Drifts: A Novel (Penguin, May 19, 2020)
Portrait of Kate Zambreno by Nikola Tamindzic
Epiphanies aren’t lightning bolts. They are a hummed note, a prayer mumbled constantly, brought to the surface given the right conditions. It’s as if I am always hearing three ways, first shallowly, collecting, then one level deeper as I’m processing, and finally, I am hearing with my body, which is when I’m hearing myself. That’s one way, for me, information combines with experience and becomes knowledge. I wish there were a shortcut.
— Stephanie Danler, Stray: A Memoir (Knopf, May 19, 2020)
Notes: New York Times Book Review on “Stray: A Memoir” – “In ‘Stray,’ Stephanie Danler Asks How a Victim Becomes a Perpetrator
May you hear in your own stories
the moan of wind around the corners
of half-forgotten houses
and the silence in rooms you remember…
May you study your craft as you would study
a new friend or a long time, much loved lover.
And all the while, lost though you may be in the forest,
drop your own words on the path like pebbles
and write your way home.
– Pat Schneider, from “Blessing for a Writer” in “How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice”
Source: Thank you Whiskey River. Photo: Anka Zhuravleva. Inspired: “This is what poetry is: not a kind of public posturing but a private language of music and imagery that is strange and compelling enough that it can speak privately to thousands of people at the same time.” ~ Ilya Kaminsky, from “Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky” by Garth Greenwell, March/April 2019 (Feb 13, 2019)
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Thirty years ago, I was remembering, an eminent writer had given me some unsolicited advice.
Just look at an orange, she said.
Go on looking at it. For hours.
Then put down what you see.
– C. P. Snow, Strangers and Brothers: Last Things
Photo: anka zhuravleva