“Our mind is dark in some way, and so we use rhetoric as a kind of prop or foil.” Quote by 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.” WritingTryingLevelsClassHappenedTeachingFlowerPerspectiveUniversityTinyExquisiteColoradoAlpine 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).” ThinkingMeanDifferentOffersGardenFranceErasFormalGeographyDifferent ErasTableau 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.” ReadingSpecialClimateClimate ChangeAccidentsUrgencyFragility 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."” PlayCoursesBehindsGonePeriodsLeavingSonnetFadingRacksSpectaclesPageantTransienceProspero 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.” MeanHappensLanguageCenturyGardenFragileFragile 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.” ThinkingWayKindMadeEyeUsedExampleShapesGardenEarsDressesQueensJust OneReignVirginsSpyCastlesAppearingSymbolismQueen ElizabethWearing A Dress 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.” WritingDifferentReasonLinesCompanyLengthVocabulary 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.” ThinkingKnowsWayKindInterestPoetTrainingContemporaryVisualsImagery Author:Martha Ronk