What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle. What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel. What I thought was an injustice turned out to be a color of the sky.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the idea that perceived obstacles and endings can often lead to new beginnings and perspectives.
In this quote, Tony Hoagland explores the transformative nature of perception, revealing how life experiences that initially seem like finality or barriers can actually be gateways to new insights and opportunities. The imagery he uses—a middle instead of an end, a tunnel instead of a wall, and a color of the sky instead of an injustice—symbolizes the unexpected beauty and possibilities that can arise from our challenges, encouraging a shift in perspective.
In practice
Using this quote in a motivational speech to inspire resilience in the face of challenges.
So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million miles from here.' A good poetic voice can do both at once.
When you're a student of poetry, you're lucky if you don't realize how untalented you are until you get a little better. Otherwise, you would just stop.
Legal discrimination between the sexes is, in almost every instance, founded on outmoded views of society and the pre-scientific beliefs about psychology and physiology. It is time to sweep away these relics of the past and set further generations free of them.
Black people are the magical faces at the bottom of society's well. Even the poorest whites, those who must live their lives only a few levels above, gain their self-esteem by gazing down on us. Surely, they must know that their deliverance depends on letting down their ropes. Only by working together is escape possible. Over time, many reach out, but most simply watch, mesmerized into maintaining their unspoken commitment to keeping us where we are, at whatever cost to them or to us (Bell).
For the first time in the history of our country the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.
The invisible is only another unexplored country, a brave new world.
The task is not just to understand the world but to change it.
We have always policed the bodies of people of color, and black people in particular. The Jim Crow South is a classic example. White flight in the North. School segregation. Gerrymandering.
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