Paul Macdonald

“What hurts so bad about youth isn't the actual butt whippings the world delivers. It's the stupid hopes playacting like certainties.”
― Mary Karr, Lit

“With whom do you believe your lot is cast?
From where does your strength come?

I think somehow, somewhere
every poem of mine must repeat those questions

which are not the same. There is a whom, a where
that is not chosen that is given and sometimes falsely given

in the beginning we grasp whatever we can
to survive”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“Daddy said a Republican was somebody who couldn’t enjoy eating unless he knew somebody else was hungry,”
― Mary Karr, The Liars' Club

“Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life