“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.”
― Upstream: Selected Essays
― Upstream: Selected Essays
“I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.”
― Upstream: Selected Essays
― Upstream: Selected Essays
“Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.”
― Upstream: Selected Essays
― Upstream: Selected Essays
“I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple--or a green field--a place to enter, and in which to feel.”
― Upstream: Selected Essays
― Upstream: Selected Essays
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Jamie’s 2025 Year in Books
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