Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor. Reading it-the best of it-can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up … - Sven Birkerts
I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up …
I read books to read myself. - Sven Birkerts
I read books to read myself.
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