"If we have not struggled/as hard as we can/at our strongest/how will we sense/the shape of our losses/or know what sustains/us longest or name/what change costs us,/saying how strange/it is that one sector/of the self can step in/for another in trouble,/how loss activates/a latent double, how/we can feed/as upon nectar/upon need?"

--

Source : Kay Ryan (2007). “Say Uncle: Poems”, p.54, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Kay Ryan

#Loss Quotes #Names Quotes #Self Quotes

“After I got married, the first child born to us was mentally handicapped.”
“Peppers, garlic, hazelnuts and brazil nuts make my mouth, tongue and eyes swell and itch within minutes of eating them.”
“And the worst possible thing we could know â€” worse than knowing of our descent from a mass of microorganisms â€” is that we are nobodies not somebodies, puppets not people.”
“It is in revolutionary periods that the culmination of previous trends and the beginning of new ones appear.”
“I think it's very important to have a sense of balance in covering the war, but you don't have to be morally neutral about terrorism.”
“Okay, here is the uplifting part: Your life isn't and has never been about you....about what you accomplish, how successful you are or are not, how much money you make, what sort of position you ascend to,...or how much good you do for others or the world at large. Your life, like mine, and like everyone else's has always been about one thing: love.”
“Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.”
“The first picture of his I ever saw was during a lecture at the Rhyl camera club. I was 16 and the speaker was Emrys Jones. He projected the picture upside down. Deliberately, to disregard the subject matter to reveal the composition. It's a lesson I've never forgotten.”

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