Marie Bortolotto 2020


Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

- Adam Zagajewski, 1945 -
Polish poet, novelist, translator


“Disdain for poetry (or any form of art)
reveals an interesting cultural anxiety
about the space for imagination in our lives…
poetry is this space where every single
particle of language is charged with the
most meaning.”

Quote by Bob Lerner, Author 1979 -

Marie Bortolotto 2020


“I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life,
you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes,
I follow it along trustingly. And I don’t have any sense
of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering
out either. It is just going steadily along.”

Quote by William Stafford,
1914 - 1993 American poet



"Violinists practicing scales and dancers repeating
the same movements over decades are not simply
warming up or mechanically training their muscles.
They are learning how to attend unswervingly,
moment by moment, to themselves and their art;
learning to come into steady presence…
Yet however it is brought into being, true concentration
appears - paradoxically - at the moment willed effort
drops away… At such moments, there may be some
strong emotion present - feelings of joy, or even grief -
but as often, in deep concentration, the self disappears.
We seem to fall utterly into the object of our attention,
or else vanish into attentiveness itself. This may explain
why the creative is so often descried as impersonal and
beyond self, as if inspiration were literally what its
etymology implies, something “breathed in”.

- from Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
by Jane Hirshfield, 1953-, Poet, Translator, Author