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Martha Ronk Quotes

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Martha Ronk, born in 1940, is an individual whose profession and category are unknown. Detailed information about her is limited.

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All Thinking Way Writing Different Kind Language Trying Garden I Can Alpine

Famous Martha Ronk Quotes

“I can't remember the past, or I can't see very clearly, or I've gotten older and the person I was isn't there anymore, and the place I grew up isn't where I live now.”

Persons I Can Past Remember Grew Grew Up Remembering The Past

Author:Martha Ronk

“I'm really interested in what you remember, how you remember, what your perspective is as opposed to somebody else's.”

Remember Perspective

Author:Martha Ronk

“Even your own memory changes over time because of circumstances or even because your body changes.”

Body Memories Circumstances Your Body Changes Over Time Body Change

Author:Martha Ronk

“Our mind is dark in some way, and so we use rhetoric as a kind of prop or foil.”

Way Mind Kind Use Dark Rhetoric Props Foils

Author:Martha Ronk

“Everyone had always told me I had to see alpine flowers, since I was writing about flowers, and I had never seen these. So I happened to be teaching a class at the University of Colorado, and I got to go for hikes that took me there. But my perspective was most often down at ground level, trying to see quite tiny exquisite flowers.”

Writing Trying Levels Class Happened Teaching Flower Perspective University Tiny Exquisite Colorado Alpine

Author:Martha Ronk

“Gardens do offer a temporal tableau and certainly mean differently in different eras and indeed geographies (think of the formal gardens in France).”

Thinking Mean Different Offers Garden France Eras Formal Geography Different Eras Tableau

Author:Martha Ronk

“I've always been interested in the fragility of things, and with special urgency now because of climate change, but also because of the accidents of reading.”

Reading Special Climate Climate Change Accidents Urgency Fragility

Author:Martha Ronk

“If it's a drop of dew, it will dissolve.”

Ifs Dew

Author:Martha Ronk

“Shakespeare, of course, makes us ever aware of transience, not only in the sonnets, but also powerfully in his plays - spectacles for a brief period of time and then gone, as when Prospero describes the pageant fading, leaving "not a rack behind."”

Play Courses Behinds Gone Periods Leaving Sonnet Fading Racks Spectacles Pageant Transience Prospero

Author:Martha Ronk

“I'm always somehow drawn to that sense of how fragile things are and how a garden means so differently depending upon whose language you happen to be in or whose century you happen to be in.”

Mean Happens Language Century Garden Fragile Fragile Things

Author:Martha Ronk

“I think about the kinds of gardens that Queen Elizabeth put up. She made gardens in the shape of an "E," for Elizabeth, just one more way in which she used symbolism to solidify her reign: appearing as the Virgin Queen, for example, or wearing a dress embroidered with eyes and ears to indicate that she knew all that was going on in her castle; she had spies.”

Thinking Way Kind Made Eye Used Example Shapes Garden Ears Dresses Queens Just One Reign Virgins Spy Castles Appearing Symbolism Queen Elizabeth Wearing A Dress

Author:Martha Ronk

“Each of us is present, but partially.”

Author:Martha Ronk

“One of the reasons I like immersing myself in different texts, putting myself in the company of other writers, is that they do change your vocabulary. They change what you write about or they change the length of lines.”

Writing Different Reason Lines Company Length Vocabulary

Author:Martha Ronk

“I know that in some ways I operate from a kind of antiquated interest in imagery, while many contemporary poets are not so interested in imagery. I think part of it is my training, and just my visual sense of things.”

Thinking Knows Way Kind Interest Poet Training Contemporary Visuals Imagery

Author:Martha Ronk

“I spend a lot of time revising. I'm not somebody who can move slowly.”

Moving Revising

Author:Martha Ronk

“I can't move my body slowly. I can't move the line slowly. So I end up with way too much, often opaque to me later.”

Way I Can Ends Body Moving Lines Too Much Opaque

Author:Martha Ronk

“A number of poems don't work alone. They need to fit together to work.”

Needs Together Numbers Fit

Author:Martha Ronk

“I prefer always to think that I am creating a book, not a series of stand-alone poems.”

Thinking Book Creating Series Stand Alone

Author:Martha Ronk

“The days start to be charged not because tomorrow you're leaving, but because in three weeks you're leaving. The future impinges. So you start to think about the frame.”

Thinking Three Week Tomorrow Leaving

Author:Martha Ronk

“You can get a sense of the wonderful power of framing by holding your fingers up in a kind of square, walking around the room and framing it differently - how that changes the nature of what you think the room is like.”

Thinking Kind Rooms Wonderful Walking Fingers Squares Framing

Author:Martha Ronk

“Looking out a window from different vantage points changes what you see and therefore what you write.”

Writing Different Window Vantage Point

Author:Martha Ronk

“I'm in California, so I know people who are natives who tell me there's lots of weather here, but it's not the same as being in Vermont. Since I grew up on the East Coast I miss that weather all the time. You'd think I'd get used to not having it, but I don't.”

People Thinking Knows Used Missing Grew Grew Up East Weather California Coast East Coast Vermont

Author:Martha Ronk

“Often poets fall into groups that exclude others, and don't pay attention to those who write in different ways. It seems so limited to me.”

Way Writing Different Seems Fall Pay Attention Groups Poet Pay Attention Different Ways

Author:Martha Ronk

“I want literature to open all the doors that I can't open by myself, and to allow me to see things that I wouldn't otherwise see.”

Want I Can Literature Doors

Author:Martha Ronk

“I try to attach myself to things around me so that they don't slip away.”

Trying Slips

Author:Martha Ronk

“I think those of us who use language are always trying for this, trying to keep everything from floating away by trying to write about it despite failure.”

Thinking Writing Trying Use Language Despite Floating Always Trying Floating Away

Author:Martha Ronk

“One of the things I've always thought is that if I were to write a poetics, it would have to do with the poetics of failure, and the way in which all the things that you claim or that you try for are already based on the limits of language.”

Ifs Way Writing Trying Language Limits Claims

Author:Martha Ronk

“Language is as fragile as the little alpine plant.”

Littles Language Plant Fragile Alpine

Author:Martha Ronk

“For me, failure has to be acknowledged, needs to be faced in some way.”

Way Needs

Author:Martha Ronk

About the Author

Born: 1940
Known for: Author
Quotes: 29

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