"Yes yes, we're magicians"
Ammons, Tsvetaeva, Grossman, Gregg, Martin, Beckett, Lispector
A.R. Ammons:
I couldn’t avoid being a poet. I was really having a pretty rough time of things, and I had a lot of energy, and poems were practically the only recourse I had to alleviate that energy and that anxiety. I take no credit for all the poems I’ve written. They were a way of releasing anxiety.
Marina Tsvetaeva, 1919:
David Grossman:
When I’m writing a book that takes years to complete, I emerge from the last page totally different from who I was on page one. I learn constantly from my books. This is why it takes me so many years to write a novel, because I do not really understand what I write and why I write it. Only later do I understand what it wants to tell me. I’m not trying to mystify it—in a practical way, I think it is only through writing that I allow myself to experience things I would not be courageous enough for in real life.
Linda Gregg:
Agnes Martin:
Samuel Beckett:
Clarice Lispector (trans. Elizabeth Lowe and Earl Fitz):
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