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When One's Not Writing Poems - And I'm Not At The Moment - You Wonder How You Ever Did It. It's Like Another Country You Can't Reach.
-May Sarton
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When One's Not Writing

May Sarton
...
When One's Not Writing Poems - And I'm Not At The Moment - You Wonder How You Ever Did It. It's Like Another Country You Can't Reach.

Understanding the Quote: "when one's not writing poems - and i'm not at the moment..."

This quote by May Sarton reflects deeply on the theme of country. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Country, Writing, Wonder, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how May Sarton interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About May Sarton

May Sarton is celebrated for insightful thoughts on country and writing. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Country
Writing
Wonder
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When I Am Working I Immediately Feel Hopeful.
Hopeful
Feels
Is It Perhaps The One Necessity Of Love, That It Be Needed? And The One Great Human Tragedy That It So Rarely Is?
Tragedy
Needed
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I Have Sometimes Wondered Also Whether In People Like Me Who Come To The Boil Fast (soupe Au Lait, The French Call This Trait, Like A Milk Soup That Boils Over) The Tantrum Is Not A Built-in Safety Valve Against Madness Or Illness. ... The Fierce Tension In Me, When It Is Properly Channeled, Creates The Good Tension For Work. But When It Becomes Unbalanced I Am Destructive. How To Isolate That Good Tension Is My Problem These Days. Or, Put In Another Way, How To Turn The Heat Down Fast Enough So The Soup Won't Boil Over!
Anger
People
Safety
I Believe That Children Long For Form Just As Grownups Do, And That It Releases Rather Than Cramps Creative Energy.
Children
Believe
Long
I Sometimes Think Men Don't 'hear' Very Well, If I Take Your Meaning To Be 'understand What Is Going On In A Person.' That's What Makes Them So Restful. Women Wear Each Other Out With Their Everlasting Touching Of The Nerve.
Men
Thinking
Touching
It Is Dangerous It Seems To Me For A Civilization When There Is A Complete Abyss Betewen People In General And The Artists. Or Is It Always So? The Poets Who Are Most Ardently On The People's Side Write In Such A Way That The People Cannot See Rhyme Nor Reason To Their Work.
Writing
Artist
Civilization
The Trouble Is, Old Age Is Not Interesting Until One Gets There. It's A Foreign Country With An Unknown Language To The Young And Even To The Middle-aged.
Country
Interesting
Age
The More Articulate One Is, The More Dangerous Words Become.
Danger
Dangerous
Joy, Happiness ... We Do Not Question. They Are Beyond Question, Maybe. A Matter Of Being. But Pain Forces Us To Think, And To Make Connections ... To Discover What Has Been Happening To Cause It. And, Curiously Enough, Pain Draws Us To Other Human Beings In A Significant Way, Whereas Joy Or Happiness To Some Extent, Isolates.
Pain
Thinking
Joy
One Has Only To Set A Loved Human Being Against The Fact That We Are All In Peril All The Time To Get Back A Sense Of Proportion. What Does Anything Matter Compared To The Reality Of Love And Its Span, So Brief At Best, Maintained Against Such Odds?
Reality
Odds
Doe
True Power Is Given To The Vulnerable.
True Power
Vulnerable
Given
Sometimes One Has Simply To Endure A Period Of Depression For What It May Hold Of Illumination If One Can Live Through It, Attentive To What It Exposes Or Demands.
Sad
Depression
Illumination
So This Was Fame At Last! Nothing But A Vast Debt To Be Paid To The World In Energy, Blood, And Time.
Blood
Energy
Debt
For To Be Desperate Is To Discover Strength. / We Die Of Comfort And By Conflict Live.
Comfort
Conflict
Desperate
The Gift Turned Inward, Unable To Be Given, Becomes A Heavy Burden, Even Sometimes A Kind Of Poison. It Is As Though The Flow Of Life Were Backed Up.
Giving
Poison
Inward
What Frightens Me About America Today Is That In The Large Majority There Is No Active Sense Of The Value Of The Individual: Few Citizens Feel That They Are The Republic, Responsible For What Happens. And When The Individual In A Democracy Ceases To Feel His Importance, Then There Is Grave Danger That He Will Give Over His Freedom, If Not To A Fascist State, Then To The Advertising Men Or Publicity Agents Or To The Newspaper He Happens To Read.
Men
America
Giving
Once More I Realize That Solitude Is My Element, And The Reason Is That Extreme Awareness Of Other People (all Naturally Solitary People Must Feel This) Precludes Awareness Of One's Self, So After A While The Self No Longer Knows That It Exists.
Self
People
Solitude
I Have Never Written A Book That Was Not Born Out Of A Question I Needed To Answer For Myself.
Book
Answers
Born
Gardening Is A Madness, A Folly That Does Not Go Away With Age. Quite The Contrary.
Gardening
Going Away
Age
I Can Understand People Simply Fleeing The Mountainous Effort Christmas Has Become... But There Are Always A Few Saving Graces And Finally They Make Up For All The Bother And Distress.
Christmas
People
Effort
A Good Marriage Shuts Out A Very Great Deal.
Good Marriage
Deals
It Always Comes Back To The Same Necessity: Go Deep Enough And There Is A Bedrock Of Truth, However Hard.
Inspirational
Truth
Enough
When We Speak Of Being Vulnerable, It Suggests Being Especially Vulnerable To Pain. People For Whom Personal Dignity And Self-sufficiency Are Everything, Do All They Can To Shut It Out. Noli Mi Tangere. They Are Well Aware That Any Intimate Relationship Has Pain In It, Forces A Special Kind Of Awareness, Is Costly, And So They Try To Keep Themselves Unencumbered By Shutting Pain Out As Far As It Is Possible To Do So.
Pain
Intimate Relationships
Self
May We Agree That Private Life Is Irrelevant? Multiple, Mixed, Ambiguous At Best - Out Of It We Try To Fashion The Crystal Clear, The Singular, The Absolute, And That Is What Is Relevant; That Is What Matters.
Fashion
What Matters
Trying
Instant Intimacy Was Too Often Followed By Disillusion.
Intimacy
Instant
Disillusion
A Body Without Bones Would Be A Limp Impossible Mess, So A Day Without Steady Routine Would Be Disruptive And Chaotic.
Would Be
Routine
Body
Try Making A Poem As If It Were A Table, Clear And Solid, Standing There Outside You.
Trying
Tables
Clear
In Poetry Compromise Is Fatal. In Action Of Any Cooperative Sort It Is Inevitable. The Thing Is To Find The Balance.
Balance
Action
Compromise
Poetry Is A Dangerous Profession Between Conflict And Resolution, Between Feeling And Thought, Between Becoming And Being, Between The Ultra-personal And The Universal - And These Balances Are Shifting All The Time.
Feelings
Balance
Shifting
Failure Would Only Be If You Had Somewhere Stopped Growing. As Far As I Can See The Whole Duty Of The Artist Is To Keep On Growing.
Failure
Artist
Growing
The Minute One Utters A Certainty, The Opposite Comes To Mind.
Opposites
Mind
Minutes
Without Darkness, Nothing Comes To Birth, As Without Light, Nothing Flowers.
Love
Inspirational
Flower
There Are Some Griefs So Loud/they Could Bring Down The Sky/and There Are Griefs So Still/none Knows How Deep They Lie.
Lying
Grief
Sky
You Can't Plan For A Seizure Of Feeling, And For This Reason I Put Everything Else Aside When I'm Inspired.
Inspiration
Feelings
Inspired
One Thing Is Certain, And I Have Always Known It - The Joys Of My Life Have Nothing To Do With Age. They Do Not Change. Flowers, The Morning And Evening Light, Music, Poetry, Silence, The Goldfinches Darting About
Morning
Flower
Evening Light
A Great Silence Has Descended On Me For The Last Six Months. I Am As Silent As An Arab In The Desert, As Dry, Thirsty, And Full Of Wonder And Rumours Which Do Not Materialize Into Camels Or Travellers At All, But Just Vanish Into The Silent Spaces From Where They Came. I Expect This Is A Good Thing Though It Is Extremely Irritating - The Brink Of A Voice And Never A Voice.
Voice
Space
Silence
Gardening Is One Of The Rewards Of Middle Age, When One Is Ready For An Impersonal Passion, A Passion That Demands Patience, Acute Awareness Of A World Outside Oneself, And The Power To Keep On Growing Through All The Times Of Drought, Through The Cold Snows, Towards Those Moments Of Pure Joy When All Failures Are Forgotten And The Plum Tree Flowers.
Flower
Passion
Snow
Do I Think There's Life After Death? No, I Think My Books Are My Life After Death.
Book
Thinking
Immortality
People Are Always Talking About The Joys Of Youth-but, Oh, How Youth Can Suffer!
Talking
People
Joy
Everything That Slows Us Down And Forces Patience, Everything That Sets Us Back Into The Slow Circles Of Nature, Is A Help. Gardening Is An Instrument Of Grace.
Life
Patience
Nature
It Is, I Assume, Quite Easy To Wither Into Old Age, And Hard To Grow Into It.
Age
Assuming
Easy
Love Opens The Doors Into Everything, As Far As I Can See, Including And Perhaps Most Of All, The Door Into One's Own Secret, And Often Terrible And Frightening, Real Self.
Real
Believe
Struggle
I Can Tell You That Solitude Is Not All Exaltation, Inner Space Where The Soul Breathes And Work Can Be Done. Solitude Exposes The Nerve, Raises Up Ghosts. The Past, Never At Rest, Flows Through It.
Past
Space
Soul
A Poet Never Feels Useful.
Poet
Feels
It Is A Waste Of Time To See People Who Have Only A Social Surface To Show. I Will Make Every Effort To Find Out The Real Person, But If I Can't, Then I Am Upset And Cross. Time Wasted Is Poison.
Real
People
Effort
In The Novel Or The Journal You Get The Journey. In A Poem You Get The Arrival.
Journey
Novel
Journal
A House That Does Not Have One Warm, Comfy Chair In It Is Soulless.
Home
House
Doe
Growing Old Is, Of All Things We Experience, That Which Takes The Most Courage, And At A Time When We Have The Least Resources, Especially With Which To Meet Frustration.
Frustration
Age
Growing
For Me The Moral Dilemma This Past Year Has Been How To Make Peace With The Unacceptable.
Moral
Dilemma
Making Peace
There Is Only One Real Deprivation... And That Is Not To Be Able To Give One's Gifts To Those One Loves Most.
Love
Real
Giving
Most People Have To Talk So They Won't Hear.
People
Speakers
A Garden Is Always A Series Of Losses Set Against A Few Triumphs, Like Life Itself.
Death
Failure
Loss
At Some Point I Believe One Has To Stop Holding Back For Fear Of Alienating Some Imaginary Reader Or Real Relative Or Friend, And Come Out With Personal Truth.
Real
Believe
Holding Back
Absence Becomes The Greatest Presence.
Absence
Excellence Costs A Great Deal.
Excellence
Cost
Deals
Routine Is Not A Prison, But The Way Into Freedom From Time.
Routine
Way
Prison
The Price Of Being Oneself Is So High And Involves So Much Ruthlessness Toward Others (or What Looks Like Ruthlessness In Our Duty-bound Culture) That Very Few People Can Afford It.
People
Culture
Looks
Unless The Gentle Inherit The Earth, / There Will Be No Earth.
Earth
Gentle
The Beginner Hugs His Infant Poem To Him And Does Not Want It To Grow Up. But You May Have To Break Your Poem To Remake It.
Growing Up
Hug
Doe
When One's Not Writing Poems - And I'm Not At The Moment - You Wonder How You Ever Did It. It's Like Another Country You Can't Reach.
Country
Writing
Wonder
And I Refuse To Feel Guilty About Not Letter-writing Either. There Are Times When One Can, Times When One Can't. In The Times When An Enormous Amount Of Living Is Going On, One Can't.
Writing
Letters
Guilty
One Does Not "find Oneself" By Pursuing One's Self, But On The Contrary By Pursuing Something Else And Learning Through Discipline Or Routine. . . Who One Is And Wants To Be.
Being Yourself
Discipline
Doe
When We Admit Our Vulnerability, We Include Others. If We Deny It, We Shut Them Out.
Pet
Deny
Ifs
If We Are To Understand The Human Condition, And If We Are To Accept Ourselves In All The Complexity, Self-doubt, Extravagance Of Feeling, Guilt, Joy, The Slow Freeing Of The Self To Its Full Capacity For Action And Creation, Both As Human Being And As Artist, We Have To Know All We Can About Each Other, And We Have To Be Willing To Go Naked.
Artist
Self
Joy
I’m Only Able To Write Poetry, For The Most Part, When I Have A Muse, A Woman Who Focuses The World For Me.
Writing
World
Able
He [the Cat] Wound Himself Around Her Legs, Purring The Purr Of Ardent Desire Like A Kettle Coming To A Boil And Then Bubbling Very Fast.
Cat
Desire
Legs
Where Music Thundered Let The Mind Be Still, Where The Will Triumphed Let There Be No Will, What Light Revealed, Now Let The Dark Fulfill.
Dark
Light
Mind
What Is There To Do When People Die - People So Dear And Rare - But Bring Them Back By Remembering?
Healing
Grieving
People
One Of The Springs Of Poetry Is Joy.
Spring
Joy
Poetry Is
I Would Predicate That In All Great Works Of Genius Masculine And Feminine Elements In The Personality Find Expression, Whether This Androgynous Nature Is Played Out Sexually Or Not.
Expression
Masculine And Feminine
Personality
It Is Clear That We Do Not Exactly Choose Our Poems; Our Poems Choose Us.
Poet
Clear
For Any Writer Who Wants To Keep A Journal, Be Alive To Everything, Not Just To What You're Feeling, But Also To Your Pets, To Flowers, To What You're Reading.
Flower
Reading
Feelings
It Is Sometimes The Most Fragile Things That Have The Power To Endure And Become Sources Of Strength.
Strength
Sometimes
Source
We Have To Believe That Every Person Counts, Counts As A Creative Force That Can Move Mountains.
Believe
Moving
Creative
An Old Body When It Is Loved Becomes A Sacred Treasure; And Sex Itself Must Always, It Seems To Me, Come To Us As A Sacrament And Be So Used Or It Is Meaningless. The Flesh Is Suffused By The Spirit, And It Is Forgetting This In The Act Of Love-making That Creates Cynicism And Despair.
Sex
Despair
Treasure
In The Very Long Run Any Success Devours - And Perhaps Also Corrupts.
Success
Running
Long
Have The Courage To Write Whatever Your Dream Is For Yourself.
Dream
Writing
Your Dreams
Does One Come To Enjoy Even The Hardships That Help Make One The Person One Is? Or Is It That The Past Becomes A Legend To Be Remembered With Laughter?
Laughter
Past
Doe
There The Door Is Always Open Into The “holy” — Growth, Birth, Death.
Garden
Doors
Religion
I Cannot Understand Why Poetry Is Not Taught At Schools As A Way Of Seeing, A Quick, Untiring Path To Essentials.
School
Essentials
Way
Life Comes In Clusters, Clusters Of Solitude, Then A Cluster When There Is Hardly Time To Breathe.
Life
Solitude
Breathe
When You Change The Way You Look At A Thing, The Thing Itself Changes...by Mastering Feelings, She Had Come To Understand The Meaning Of Discipline And Its Reward: Freedom And Power.
Discipline
Feelings
Looks
We Saw The Strong Trees Struggle And Their Plumes Do Down, The Poplar Bend And Whip Back Till It Split To Fall, The Elm Tear Up At The Root And Topple Like A Crown, The Pine Crack At The Base - We Had To Watch Them All. The Ash, The Lovely Cedar. We Had To Watch Them Fall. They Went So Softly Under The Loud Flails Of Air, Before That Fury They Went Down Like Feathers, With All The Hundred Springs That Flowered In Their Hair, And All The Years, Endured In All The Weathers - To Fall As If They Were Nothing, As If They Were Feathers.
Strong
Spring
Fall
The Tragic Thing About Learning From Experience Is I Fear That One Can Only Learn From One's Own Experience. Other People's - Other Nations' - Experiences Simply Do Not Help. They Can Be Imaginatively Learned From. But People Do Not Act On Other People's Experiences.
People
Experience
Helping
I Live Alone, Perhaps For No Good Reason, For The Reason That I Am An Impossible Creature, Set Apart By A Temperament I Have Never Learned To Use As It Could Be Used, Thrown Off By A Word, A Glance, A Rainy Day, Or One Drink Too Many. My Need To Be Alone Is Balanced Against My Fear Of What Will Happen When Suddenly I Enter The Huge Empty Silence If I Cannot Find Support There. I Go Up To Heaven And Down To Hell In An Hour, And Keep Alive Only By Imposing Upon Myself Inexorable Routines. I Write Too Many Letters And Too Few Poems.
Writing
Rainy Day
Silence
Poetry Finds Its Perilous Equilibrium Somewhere Between Music And Speech.
Speech
Equilibrium
The Creative Person, The Person Who Moves From An Irrational Source Of Power, Has To Face The Fact That This Power Antagonizes. Under All The Superficial Praise Of The Creative Is The Desire To Kill. It Is The Old War Between The Mystic And The Nonmystic, A War To The Death.
War
Moving
Power
I Write Poems, Have Always Written Them, To Transcend The Painfully Personal And Reach The Universal.
Writing
Universal
Written
I Sometimes Imagine That As One Grows Older One Comes To Live A Role Which As A Young Person One Merely 'played.
Roles
Sometimes
Imagine
Words Are More Powerful Than Perhaps Anyone Suspects, And Once Deeply Engraved In A Child's Mind, They Are Not Easily Eradicated.
Children
Powerful
Entrepreneur
There Were Moments ... When It Seemed That All One Could Be Asked Was Just To Keep The Ashtrays Clean, The Bed Made, The Wastebaskets Emptied, As If One Never Got To The Real Things Because Of The Constant Exhausting Battle To Keep Ordinary Life From Falling Apart.
Real
Fall
Battle
The Value Of Solitude - One Of Its Values - Is, Of Course, That There Is Nothing To Cushion Against Attacks From Within, Just As There Is Nothing To Help Balance At Times Of Particular Stress Or Depression.
Stress
Solitude
Balance
Self-respect Is Nothing To Hide Behind. When You Need It Most It Isn't There.
Respect
Self
Needs
Death Does Frame A Person And Somehow It Is The Good That Stays.
Doe
Persons
Life Is Always Bringing Unexpected Gifts.
Unexpected Gifts
Unexpected
Life Is
I Long For The Bulbs To Arrive, For The Early Autumn Chores Are Melancholy, But The Planting Of Bulbs Is The Work Of Hope And Is Always Thrilling.
Autumn
Long
October
My Own Feeling Is That The Only Possible Reason For Engaging In The Hard Labor Of Writing A Novel, Is That One Is Bothered By Something One Needs To Understand, And Can Come To Understand Only Through The Characters In The Imagined Situation.
Writing
Character
Feelings
Real Joy Is Becoming Exceedingly Rare Among Artists Of Any Kind. And I Have An Idea That Those Who Can And Do Communicate It Are Always People Who Have Had A Hard Time. Then The Joy Has No Smugness Or Self-righteousness In It, Is Inclusive Not Exclusive, And Comes Close To Prayer.
Prayer
Real
Artist
At Any Moment Solitude May Put On The Face Of Loneliness.
Loneliness
Solitude
May
When It Comes To The Important Things One Is Always Alone.
Important
Always Alone
Important Things
There Is No Doubt That Solitude Is A Challenge And To Maintain Balance Within It A Precarious Business. But I Must Not Forget That, For Me, Being With People Or Even With One Beloved Person For Any Length Of Time Without Solitude Is Even Worse. I Lose My Center. I Feel Dispersed, Scattered, In Pieces. I Must Have Time Alone In Which To Mull Over My Encounter, And To Extract Its Juice, Its Essence, To Understand What Has Really Happened To Me As A Consequence Of It.
Essence
People
Challenges
Innocence Is Not Pure So Much As Pleased, Always Expectant, Bright-eyed, Self-enclosed
Self
Innocence
Pure
I Always Forget How Important The Empty Days Are, How Important It May Be Sometimes Not To Expect To Produce Anything, Even A Few Lines In A Journal. A Day When One Has Not Pushed Oneself To The Limit Seems A Damaged Damaging Day, A Sinful Day. Not So! The Most Valuable Thing One Can Do For The Psyche, Occasionally, Is To Let It Rest, Wander, Live In The Changing Light Of A Room.
Light
Sloth
Important
It Feels A Long Way Up And Down From Zero.
Zero
Long
Way
True Gardeners Cannot Bear A Glove Between The Sure Touch And The Tender Root.
Garden
Roots
Gloves
In The Middle Of The Night, Things Well Up From The Past That Are Not Always Cause For Rejoicing--the Unsolved, The Painful Encounters, The Mistakes, The Reasons For Shame Or Woe. But All, Good Or Bad, Give Me Food For Thought, Food To Grow On.
Mistake
Optimistic
Past
Now I Become Myself. It’s Taken Time, Many Years And Places.
Taken
Years
Family Life! The United Nations Is Child's Play Compared To The Tugs And Splits And Need To Understand And Forgive In Any Family.
Inspiring
Children
Play
Read Between The Lines.then Meet Me In The Silence If You Can.
Silence
Read Between The Lines
Ifs
Light Is Snow Sifted / To An Abstraction.
Light
Snow
Abstraction
Gardening Is An Instrument Of Grace.
Grace
Gardening
Instruments
Lunches Are Just Not Good. They Take The Heart Out Of The Day And The Spaciousness From The Morning's Work.
Morning
Heart
Lunch
It Is Possible, I Suppose, That We Are Returning To A Dark Age. What Is Frightening Is That Violence Is Not Only Represented By Nations, But Everywhere Walks Among Us Freely.
Dark
Age
Violence
Deep Down There Was Understanding, Not Of The Facts Of Our Lives So Much As Of Our Essential Natures.
Understanding
Essentials
Facts
Poetry Is First Of All A Way Of Life And Only Secondarily A Way Of Writing.
Writing
Way
Firsts
Poetry Has A Way Of Teaching One What One Needs To Know ... If One Is Honest.
Teaching
Needs
Way
There Is A Wilder Solitude In Winter When Every Sense Is Pricked Alive And Keen.
Winter
Solitude
Alive
So Let The World Go, But Hold Fast To Joy.
Joy
World
Hold Fast
There Was Such A Thing As Women's Work And It Consisted Chiefly, Hilary Sometimes Thought, In Being Able To Stand Constant Interruption And Keep Your Temper. . . .
Able
Sometimes
Dishes
People Who Cannot Feel Punish Those Who Do.
People
Feels
Insensitivity
Poems Like To Have A Destination For Their Flight. They Are Homing Pigeons.
Pigeons
Flight
Destination
In The Country Of Pain We Are Each Alone.
Country
Pain
I Feel Happy To Be Keeping A Journal Again. I've Missed It, Missed Naming Things As They Appear, Missed The Half Hour When I Push All Duties Aside And Savor The Experience Of Being Alive In This Beautiful Place.
Beautiful
Diaries
Half
[in Old Age] There Is A Childlike Innocence, Often, That Has Nothing To Do With The Childishness Of Senility. The Moments Become Precious . . .
Age
Innocence
Moments
We Only Keep What We Lose.
Loss
Loses
How Much Hope, Expectation, And Sheer Hard Work Goes Into The Smallest Success! There Is No Being Sure Of Anything Except That Whatever Has Been Created Will Change In Time.
Hard Work
Expectations
Smallest
Gardening Is The Instrument Of Grace.
Grace
Gardening
Instruments
Here Life Goes On, Even And Monotonous On The Surface, Full Of Lightning, Of Summits And Of Despair, In Its Depths. We Have Now Arrived At A Stage In Life So Rich In New Perceptions That Cannot Be Transmitted To Those At Another Stage - One Feels At The Same Time Full Of So Much Gentleness And So Much Despair - The Enigma Of This Life Grows, Grows, Drowns One And Crushes One, Then All Of A Sudden In A Supreme Moment Of Light One Becomes Aware Of The Sacred.
Crush
Light
Perception
The Only Way Through Pain…is To Absorb, Probe, Understand Exactly What It Is And What It Means. To Close The Door On Pain Is To Miss The Chance For Growth.
Pain
Mean
Doors
It Is Curious How Any Making Of Order Makes One Feel Mentally Ordered, Ordered Inside.
Order
Curious
Feels
The Woman Who Needs To Create Works Of Art Is Born With A Kind Of Psychic Tension In Her Which Drives Her Unmercifully To Find A Way To Balance, To Make Herself Whole. Every Human Being Has This Need: In The Artist It Is Mandatory. Unable To Fulfill It, He Goes Mad. But When The Artist Is A Woman She Fulfills It At The Expense Of Herself As A Woman.
Art
Psychics
Mad
One Could Go On Revising A Prose Page Forever Whereas There Is A Point In A Poem When One Knows It Is Done Forever.
Forever
Done
Goes On
Miracles Cannot Be Explained, That Is Their Miraculous Nature.
Miracle
Miraculous
It Is Only When We Can Believe That We Are Creating The Soul That Life Has Any Meaning, But When We Can Believe It - And I Do And Always Have - Then There Is Nothing We Do That Is Without Meaning And Nothing That We Suffer That Does Not Hold The Seed Of Creation In It.
Believe
Creating
Soul
If Art Is Not To Be Life-enhancing, What Is It To Be?
Art
Art Is
Ifs
We Have To Dare To Be Ourselves, However Frightening Or Strange That Self May Prove To Be.
Inspirational
Dream
Real
I Am Furious At All The Letters To Answer, When All I Want To Do Is Think And Write Poems. ... I Long For Open Time, With No Obligations Except Toward The Inner World And What Is Going On There.
Writing
Thinking
Long
I Suppose Real Old Age Begins When One Looks Backward Rather Than Forward
Real
Inspiration
Age
Love Is Our Human Miracle.
Love Is
Miracle
Humans
Loneliness Is The Poverty Of Self; Solitude Is The Richness Of Self.
Lonely
Loneliness
Being Alone
Words Are My Passion / And Out Of Them And Me / I Would Create Beauty.
Passion
Poet
My Passion
Old Age Is Not An Illness, It Is A Timeless Ascent. As Power Diminishes, We Grow Toward The Light.
Light
Age
Ascent
What We Have Not Has Made Us What We Are. / ... / What We Are Not Drives Us To Consummation.
Ambition
Desire
Made
When I Am Alone The Flowers Are Really Seen; I Can Pay Attention To Them. They Are Felt As Presences. Without Them I Would Die...they Change Before My Eyes. They Live And Die In A Few Days; They Keep Me Closely In Touch With The Process, With Growth, And Also With Dying. I Am Floated On Their Moments.
Flower
Eye
Growth
We Can Do Anything, Or Almost, But How Balanced, Magnanimous, And Modest One Has To Be To Do Anything! And Also How Patient. It Is As True In The Arts As Anywhere Else.
Patience
Art
Patient
More Than Any Other Beauty (though It Is True Of All Beauty Except In Art) Passion Seems To Me To Have The Seeds Of Its Own Destruction In It.
Art
Passion
Destruction
Why Is It That People Who Cannot Show Feeling Presume That That Is A Strength And Not A Weakness?
Strength
Happiness
People
I Love Giving Flowers. It Is So Deliciously Unlasting And Romantic.
Flower
Giving
Romance
I Am Not A Greedy Person Except About Flowers And Plants, And Then I Become Fanatically Greedy.
Flower
Garden
Greedy
I Write Poems About Relationships, Love Relationships, And I'm Not Able To Do That All The Time. I Could Go Two Years Without Writing Poems, And Then Write A Dozen. Having A Novel To Work On, With The Intricate Puzzle Of Character And Plot To Work Out, Is Satisfying For The Time There Is No Poetry.
Writing
Character
Years
For Inside All The Weakness Of Old Age, The Spirit, God Knows, Is As Mercurial As It Ever Was.
Self Confidence
Age
Weakness
There Is A Proper Balance Between Not Asking Enough Of Oneself And Asking Or Expecting Too Much.
Acceptance
Balance
Asking
One Must Think Like A Hero To Behave Like A Merely Decent Human Being.
Courage
Hero
Thinking
Am I Too Old, Perhaps, Ever To Take In Another's Life To Share With Mine On A Permanent Basis? If So, I Must Make Do With What I Have... And What I Have Is A Great Richness Of Friends And A Positively Ardent Love Of Nature. Not Nothing!
Share
Nature Love
Bases
Women's Work Is Always Toward Wholeness.
Dishes
Wholeness
Though Friendship Is Not Quick To Burn It Is Explosive Stuff.
Best Friend
Friendship
Losing Friends
Public Education Was Not Founded To Give Society What It Wants. Quite The Opposite.
Opposites
Giving
Want
It Is Always Hard To Hear The Buried Truth From Another Person.
Buried
Persons
Hard
Flowers And Plants Are Silent Presences. They Nourish Every Sense Except The Ear.
Life
Music
Flower
The Fact Is That I Have Lived With The Belief That Power, Any Kind Of Power, Was The One Thing Forbidden To Poets. ... Power Requires That The Inner Person Never Be Unmasked. No, We Poets Have To Go Naked. And Since This Is So, It Is Better That We Stay Private People; A Naked Public Person Would Be Rather Ridiculous, What?
People
Naked
Would Be
It Is Dark Now. The Snow Is Deep Blue And The Ocean Nearly Black. It Is Time For Some Music.
Ocean
Dark
Blue
I Tell The Gods Are Still Alive / And They Are Not Consoling.
God
Alive
Consoling
Keep Busy With Survival. Imitate The Trees. Learn To Lose In Order To Recover, And Remember Nothing Stays The Same For Long, Not Even Pain. Sit It Out. Let It All Pass. Let It Go.
Letting Go
Pain
Order
O Cruel Cloudless Space, And Pale Bare Ground Where The Poor Infant Lies! Why Do We Feel Restored As In A Sacramental Place? Here Mystery Is Artifice, And Here A Vision Of Such Peace Is Stored, Healing Flows From It Through Our Eyes.
Lying
Healing
Eye
I Think Of The Trees And How Simply They Let Go, Let Fall The Riches Of A Season, How Without Grief (it Seems) They Can Let Go And Go Deep Into Their Roots For Renewal And Sleep.... Imitate The Trees. Learn To Lose In Order To Recover, And Remember That Nothing Stays The Same For Long, Not Even Pain, Psychic Pain. Sit It Out. Let It All Pass. Let It Go.
Letting Go
Pain
Grief
If I Were To Choose One Single Thing That That Would Restore Paris To The Senses, It Would Be That Strangely Sweet, Unhealthy Smell Of The Métro, So Very Unlike The Dank Cold Or The Stuffy Heat Of Subways In New York.
Sweet
New York
Paris
Does Anything In Nature Despair Except Man? An Animal With A Foot Caught In A Trap Does Not Seem To Despair. It Is Too Busy Trying To Survive. It Is All Closed In, To A Kind Of Still, Intense Waiting. Is This A Key? Keep Busy With Survival. Imitate The Trees. Learn To Lose In Order To Recover, And Remember That Nothing Stays The Same For Long, Not Even Pain, Psychic Pain. Sit It Out. Let It All Pass. Let It Go.
Letting Go
Nature
Pain
I Feel More Alive When I'm Writing Than I Do At Any Other Time--except Maybe When I'm Making Love.
Writing
Making Love
Alive
Inside My Mother's Death / I Lay And Could Not Breathe.
Mother
Grief
Breathe
And One Cold Starry Night / Whatever Your Belief / The Phoenix Will Take Flight / Over The Seas Of Grief / To Sing Her Thrilling Song / To Stars And Waves And Sky / For Neither Old Nor Young / The Phoenix Does Not Die.
Song
Stars
Grief
A Holiday Gives One A Chance To Look Backward And Forward; To Reset Oneself By An Inner Compass.
Holiday
Giving
Environmental
In A Total Work, The Failures Have Their Not Unimportant Place.
Unimportant
We Are Never Done With Thinking About Our Parents, I Suppose, And Come To Know Them Better Long After They Are Dead Than We Ever Did When They Were Alive.
Thinking
Long
Parent
I Suppose One Has To Remember That 'life' Is Important Too, Though It's Something I Forget In Some Moods, Everything Except Work Seeming Like An Interruption Or Really Non-life.
Important
Remember
Forget
You Will Always Be Here With Me; As Long As I Live, A Towering Figure Of Love.
Long
Memorial
Figures
... Love Is Healing, Even Rootless Love.
Healing
Love Is
The Hardest Thing We Are Asked To Do In This World Is To Remain Aware Of Suffering, Suffering About Which We Can Do Nothing.
Compassion
Suffering
World
She Became For Me An Island Of Light, Fun, Wisdom Where I Could Run With My Discoveries And Torments And Hopes At Any Time Of Day And Find Welcome.
Running
Fun
Islands
I Have Written Every Poem, Every Novel, For The Same Purpose-to Find Out What I Think, To Know Where I Stand.
Writing
Thinking
Purpose
Love Cannot Exorcise The Gifts Of Hate. / Hate Cannot Exorcize What Has No Weight, / But Laughter We Can Never Over-rate.
Laughter
Hate
Weight
Why Should It Happen That Among The Great Many Women Whom I See And Am Fond Of, Suddenly Somebody I Meet For Half An Hour Opens The Door Into Poetry?
Doors
Half
Hours
The Ambience Here Is Order And Beauty. That Is What Frightens Me When I Am First Alone Again. I Feel Inadequate. I Have Made An Open Place, A Place For Meditation. What If I Cannot Find Myself Inside It?
Beauty
Order
Meditation
Being Very Rich As Far As I Am Concerned Is Having A Margin. The Margin Is Being Able To Give.
Giving
Able
Wealth
Fighting Dragons Is My Holy Joy.
Fighting
Dragons
Joy
We Are Able To Laugh When We Achieve Detachment, If Only For A Moment.
Humor
Laughing
Able
If One Is The Kind Of Creature I Am And Wants To Do The Kind Of Writing I Want To Do, An Undisturbed Bourgeois Existence With No Distractions Seems In Order. A Single Meeting Outside The Family Upsets One's Whole Inner Web, Makes One Start Off On Two-days' Thinking And Weighing, Destroys A Delicate Balance Etc. Etc. ... I Now Have Enough Friends To Last Me A Lifetime And That Is Enough. I Am Going To Close The Doors And Hibernate At Least For A Couple Of Years. I Am Frightfully Depressed About My Work. It Seems To Me Perfectly Mediocre.
Couple
Writing
Thinking
A Man With A Talent Does What Is Expected Of Him, Makes His Way, Constructs, Is An Engineer, A Composer, A Builder Of Bridges. It's The Natural Order Of Things That He Construct Objects Outside Himself And His Family. The Woman Who Does So Is Aberrant. We Have To Expiate For This Cursed Talent Someone Handed Out To Us, By Mistake, In The Black Mystery Of Genetics.
Mistake
Men
Order
People Who Are Always Thinking Of The Feelings Of Others Can Be Very Destructive Because They Are Hiding So Much From Themselves.
Thinking
People
Feelings
Go Rich In Poverty. Go Rich In Poetry. This Nothingness Is Plentitude.
Poverty
Rich
Nothingness
What Is Destructive Is Impatience, Haste, Expecting Too Much Too Fast.
Inspirational
Haste
Too Much
For A Long Time Now, Every Meeting With Another Human Being Has Been The Reverberations After Even The Simplest Conversation. But The Deep Collision Is And Has Been With My Unregenerate, Tormenting And Tormented Self...i Am Unable To Become What I See. I Feel Like An Inadequate Machine, A Machine That Breaks Down At Crucial Moments, Grinds To A Dreadful Halt, "won't Go".
Self
Long
Machines
...i Feel More Alive When I'm Writing Than I Do At Any Other Time--except When I'm Making Love. Two Things When You Forget Time, When Nothing Exists Except The Moment--the Moment Of Writing, The Moment Of Love. That Perfect Concentration Is Bliss.
Sex
Writing
Two
About Loving, I Have Little To Learn From The Young.
Littles
Youth
Young
Whatever Peace I Know Rests In The Natural World, In Feeling Myself A Part Of It, Even In A Small Way.
Peace
Feelings
World
It Looks As If I Were Meant To Be Alone, And That Any Hope Of Happiness Is Not Meant. Am I Too Old To Acquire The Knack For Happiness?
Looks
Knack
Were Meant To Be
All Great People Are Humble Because Great People Have Great Work And Are Humbled By The Largeness Of Their Dreams.
Dream
Humble
Humility
I Loved Them All The Way One Loves At Any Age -- If It's Real At All -- Obsessively, Painfully, With Wild Exultation, With Guilt, With Conflict; I Wrote Poems To And About Them, I Put Them Into Novels (disguised Of Course); I Brooded Upon Why They Were As They Were, So Often Maddening Don't You Know? I Wrote Them Ridiculous Letters. I Lived With Their Faces. I Knew Their Every Gesture By Heart. I Stalked Them Like Wild Animals. I Studied Them As If They Were Maps Of The World -- And In A Way I Suppose They Were.
Real
Heart
Animal
For Poetry Is, I Believe, Always An Act Of The Spirit. The Poem Teaches Us Something While We Make It. The Poem Makes You As You Make The Poem, And Your Making Of The Poem Requires All Your Capacities Of Thought, Feeling, Analysis, And Synthesis.
Believe
Feelings
Analysis
Anyone Who Is Going To Be A Writer Knows Enough At Fifteen To Write Several Novels.
Writing
Fifteen
Enough
Without Anxiety Life Would Have Very Little Savor.
Anxiety
Littles
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