Anna Kamienska Quotes

I have no talent. I write poems for myself, to think things through, that’s all.

Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers. If only I could find a better kind of journal, humbler, one that would preserve the same thoughts, the same flesh of life, which is worth saving.

I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself.

Where your pain is, there your heart lies also.

I’m moved by everything broken and crippled. Since that’s how we really are.

This morning I suddenly catch myself: I'm not there, I'm so lost in thought, I don't know what's going on around me. Can you think yourself to death?

We cling to words like drowning men to straws. But still we drown, we drown.

Even a painful longing is some form of presence.

There are things better left untouched by words.

I don’t write poetry when I wish, I write when I can’t, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.

I am that which lies beyond time. Like a melody, which sounds completely only after the last note is played.

Letters of the condemned. Last words scratched on a cell’s wall. To write like that.

My poems are more my silence than my speech. Just as music is a kind of quiet. Sounds are needed only to unveil the various layers of silence.

The way a source strains toward the light, toward the air. Its laboring work, its effort, its black passageways like despair. That’s the way a poet looks for words. With muscles, gestures.

Poetry is a presentiment of the truth.

Tell me what's the difference

I’ve learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what’s unsaid, what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being.