Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. The printed page becomes a kind of wrought-iron fence we crawl through, returning, once we have wandered, to the very place we started.
Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensificatio… - Sven Birkerts
Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensificatio…
- Sven Birkerts
Every place, once unique, itself, is strangely shot through with radiations from every other place. ‘There’ was then; ‘here’ is now. - Sven Birkerts
Every place, once unique, itself, is strangely shot through with radiations from every other place. ‘There’ was then; ‘here’ is now.
Language is the soul’s ozone layer and we thin it at our peril. - Sven Birkerts
Language is the soul’s ozone layer and we thin it at our peril.
Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for… - Sven Birkerts
Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for…
A poem is a construction of inner space. Language is to inner space as light is to material space. - Sven Birkerts
A poem is a construction of inner space. Language is to inner space as light is to material space.
What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny. - Sven Birkerts
What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny.
A book is solitude, privacy; it is a way of holding the self apart from the crush of the outer world. - Sven Birkerts
A book is solitude, privacy; it is a way of holding the self apart from the crush of the outer world.
If anything has changed about my reading over the years, it is that I value the state a book puts me in more that I value the specific contents. - Sven Birkerts
If anything has changed about my reading over the years, it is that I value the state a book puts me in more that I value the specific contents.
I read books to read myself. - Sven Birkerts
I read books to read myself.
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