... the attempt to render visual intricacy makes words feel unwieldy, like sacks of meaning that must be lugged into place, dragged here and there, then still don't fell accurate.

... the attempt to render visual intricacy makes words feel unwieldy, like sacks of meaning that must be lugged into place, dragged here and there, then still don't fell accurate.

No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins.

Sentimental assertions are always a form of detachment; they confront the acute, terrible awareness of individual pain, the sharp particularity of loss or the fierce individuality of passion with the dulling universal certainty of platitude.

Questions, inside the larger mystery of sorrow, which contains us and our daily transit, and is large enough indeed to contain the whole shifting tidal theater where I make small constructions, my metaphors, my defenses. Against which I play out theories, doubts, certainties bright as high tide in sunlight, which shift just as that brightness does, in fog or rain.

Into the paradise of euphony, the good poet must introduce hell. Broken paradises are the only kind worth reading.

I've been moving a little to the music while I worked ...and then I realize I am actually dancing. It feels wonderful, though I can feel how stiff my muscles are, how rigidly I've been holding myself...Mostly I've been moving cautiously, numbly, steeled because I know, at any moment, I may be ambushed by overwhelming grief. You never know when it's coming, the word or gesture or bit of memory that dissolved you entirely...It happens every day at first, then not for a day or two, then there's a week when grief washes in every morning, every afternoon.