“I think what life experience has brought to my poems is compassion. When you work hard to make a living, raise a child up into the world, fail at marriage and try again, teach and fail, travel and fall, become ill, well again, weak but grateful, you learn patience, forbearance.” ThinkingWorldTryingWellsChildrenHardFallCompassionTeachFailingHard WorkWeakRaisesGratefulIllLife ExperienceTry AgainForbearance Author:Dorianne Laux
“It's difficult to talk about [W.S.] Merwin's poems, as it's hard to talk about a feeling or a smell. It is what it is, but so much so that it overwhelms both sense and the senses. I aspire to something about his work, that imbues his poems, though I'm not sure I could say what that is. A purity, maybe, the kind of purity that comes from being beaten, like steel.” KindHardFeelingsDifficultSmellSensesNot SurePurityAspireSteelBeatenIt Is What It Is Author:Dorianne Laux
“How not to imagine the tumors ripening beneath his skin, flesh I have kissed, stroked with my fingertips, pressed my belly and breasts against, some nights so hard I thought I could enter him, open his back at the spine like a door or a curtain and slip in like a small fish between his ribs, nudge the coral of his brains with my lips, brushing over the blue coil of his bowels with the fluted silk of my tail.” HardNightBrainImagineDoorsSkinsBlueLipsFishesFleshBreastsSlipsTailsBellyCurtainsSpineSilkRibsFingertipsNudgeBrushingTumorsBowelsRipeningSmall Fish Author:Dorianne Laux
