"People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush."
"There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom."
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Source: Li-Young Lee (1986). “Rose: Poems”, p.21, BOA Editions, Ltd.
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"Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming."
"Memory is sweet. Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet."
"Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself."
"That's what I want, that kind of recklessness where the poem is even ahead of you. It's like riding a horse that's a little too wild for you, so there's this tension between what you can do and what the horse decides it's going to do."
"To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he'd removed the iron sliver I thought I'd die from. I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face."