It is not a question of suppressing the spoken language, but of giving words approximately the importance they have in dreams.
— Antonin Artaud
It’s a dangerous thing to say what a picture is. If things get too specific, the dream stops. There are things that happen sometimes that open a door that lets you soar out and feel a bigger thing. Like when the mind gets involved in a mystery. It’s a thrilling feeling. When you talk about things, unless you’re a poet, a big thing becomes smaller.
— David Lynch
There are words we say in the dark.
There are words we speak in the light.
And sometimes they’re the same words.
— Li-Young Lee, from “The Undressing,” The American Poetry Review (vol. 47, no. 1, January/February 2018)
There’s a sorrow that’s so old and silver it’s no longer
sorry. There’s a place
between desire and memory, some back porch
we can neither wish for nor recall.
—Don McKay, from “Song for the Song of the Wood Thrush,” Angular Unconformity: Collected Poems 1970-2014
|