What is the fear inside language? No accident of the body can make it stop burning.

Desire is no light thing.

I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.

There is something about the way that Greek poets, say Aeschylus, use metaphor that really attracts me. I don't think I can imitate it, but there's a density to it that I think I'm always trying to push towards in English.

It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.

Under the seams runs the pain.

It takes practice to shave the skin off the light.