David Giffels > Quotes

“A lifetime, one might say, of loss, but we here recognize something much different, more nuanced, more full of shadows. A lifetime of hope. And anyone who's done both - hoped and lost - knows that in many ways, hoping is worse....As I grew into early adulthood and observed a larger pattern of hope and loss and hope and loss and hope and loss, and the concurrent resilience thereof, I came to a begrudging conclusion: neither of these things - hope and loss - can exist without the other, and yet at every turn it is necessary to believe that at some point one will ultimately conquer. And that will be our legacy.”
― David Giffels, The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt

“Poetry acknowledges that life is much more complicated than anything we can say about it, and especially anything politics can say about it.”
― David Giffels, Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America

“Why does the nation turn to Ohio every four years to understand itself? Because all our struggles and all our scars and all our little bandstands and diners and neat little lawns have withstood fortunes and failures and promises and lies, quietly proving Robert Frost’s three-word definition of life: it goes on.”
― David Giffels, Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America

“Authenticity—that overplayed and elusive concept—is one resource that the postindustrial Midwest has in spades.”
― David Giffels, Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America

“I know this because we Ohioans always know if someone is from here, no matter how tenuous the connection. It is a habit of humble places. If you mention”
― David Giffels, Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America

“Most poems should enlarge our sense of politics. It’s the job of poetry to try to complicate. Poetry acknowledges that life is much more”
― David Giffels, Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America