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irene

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irene is Currently Reading

irene is currently reading

Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

by Vladislav M. Zubok

bookshelves: currently-reading, broadly-nonfiction-and-memoir

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Feb 19, 2024 08:05AM

“The poet, therefore, is truly the thief of fire.
He is responsible for humanity, for animals even; he will have to make sure his visions can be smelled, fondled, listened to; if what he brings back from beyond has form, he gives it form; if it has none, he gives it none. A language must be found…of the soul, for the soul and will include everything: perfumes, sounds colors, thought grappling with thought”
― Arthur Rimbaud

tags: poetry, poets

171 likes

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

tags: growing-up, inspirational, life

2193 likes

“Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

131 likes

“Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

394 likes

“The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.”
― James Baldwin

tags: craft, poets, writing

159 likes

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